As quoted in Al Arab Vol. 9 (1970) by the League of Arab States, p. 9
“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.”
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it today, although they keep silence about it.... And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations — infandum — and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken.... Even if it should lead only to irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is consolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and making them say: "Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to better purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I say, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right — and being right is such a little thing! — but that I feel what I say and I know what I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in reason than to have too much of it.
“Faith is belief in what I do not know now, so I can come soon enough for what I believe in.”
In The Art of Man-making: Talks on the Bhagavad Geeta http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ssyfCDBzOrYC&pg=PA187, p. 187
“What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even even a single year in perfect serenity.”
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)
Context: If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures- none lives so long a man. The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even even a single year in perfect serenity.
“And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it.”
Variant: I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn't even matter if it's true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it.
Source: Every Day
“As if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.”
As quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, London (1975), and Rebecca West : A Life (1987) by Victoria Glendinning, p. xi
