These, as you know, are not at all like Spinoza's attributes. They are not aspects or forms of the same reality, absolutely parallel and coextensive. My realms are layers: more as in Plotinus; and my moral or “spiritual” philosophy is again less Spinozistic than in the humanistic period. Spinoza's moral sentiments were plebeian, Dutch, and Jewish: perfectly happy in his corner, polishing his lenses, and saying, Great is Allah. No art, no high politics, no sympathy with greatness, no understanding of courage or of despair.
George Santayana, in his letter to Daniel MacGhie Cory, 25 January 1937
S - Z, George Santayana
From interview with Komal Nahta
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
S. M. Melamed, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933)
M - R
Dr. Bock.
The Hospital (1971)
Context: When I say impotent, I mean I've lost even my desire to work. That's a hell of a lot more primal passion than sex. I've lost my reason for being. My purpose. The only thing I ever truly loved. … We have established the most enormous, medical entity ever conceived and people are sicker than ever! WE CURE NOTHING! WE HEAL NOTHING! The whole goddamn wretched world is strangulating in front of our eyes. That's what I mean when I say impotent. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about, do you?... I'm tired. I'm very tired, Miss Drummond. And I hurt. And I've got nothing going for me anymore. Can you understand that?... And you also understand that the only admissible matter left is death.
As quoted in Perfecting Private Practice (2004) by Joan Neehall-Davidson, p. 95.
1970s and later
Source: book The Farther Reaches of Human
“To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.”
Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity
From the poems written in English
Entry (1957)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
2000s
Context: No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor—as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.
