
Source: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, p. 428
Book II, sec. 1.
Naturalis Historia
Source: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, p. 428
1980s
Context: If you are not at all concerned with the world but only with your personal salvation, following certain beliefs and superstitions, following gurus, then I am afraid it will be impossible for you and the speaker to communicate with each other. …We are not concerned at all with private personal salvation but we are concerned, earnestly, seriously, with what the human mind has become, what humanity is facing. We are concerned as human beings, human beings who are not labelled with any nationality. We are concerned at looking at this world and what a human being living in this world has to do, what is his role?
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Part I, Prop. XXIX, Scholium (trans: Edwin Curley, London: Penguin, 1996)
Ethics (1677)
“To whom it may concern: the present writer, at any rate, is neither a Hindu nor a nationalist.”
Source: 2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)
1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza
De immenso (1591)
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.