Lorrie Moore quote: “Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but onl…”

“Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.”

Thomas Browne book The Garden of Cyrus

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 4

“Material phenomenology is able to designate this invisible phenomenological substance. It is not a nothing but rather an affect, or put otherwise, it is what makes every affect, ultimately every affection, and every thing possible. The phenomenological substance that material phenomenology has in view is the pathetic immediacy in which life experiences itself. Life is itself nothing other than this pathetic embrace and, in this way, is phenomenality itself according to the how of its original phenomenalization. Life is thus not a something, like the object of biology, but the principle of every thing. It is a phenomenological life in the radical sense where life defines the essence of pure phenomenality and accordingly of being insofar as being is coextensive with the phenomenon and founded on it. For what could I know that could not appear ?”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 2-3
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

“Every living being on earth loves life above all else.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

The Unity of Religious Ideals, Part I : Seeking for the Ideal
The Spiritual Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Context: Every living being on earth loves life above all else. The smallest insect, whose life lasts only an instant, tries to escape from any danger in order to live a moment longer. And the desire to live is most developed in man.

“Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Quoted in, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915, (1996), Martin S. Pernick, Oxford University Press, New York, NY., ISBN 0195135393 ISBN 9780195135398Part I: Withholding Treatment, ch. 4, Eliminating the Unfit: Euthanasia and Eugenics, p. 92, https://books.google.com/books?id=IJJVYrnImOsC&pg=PA92&dq=%22our+puny+sentimentalism%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q2xmVd7AL4XPsAX43ICoAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22our%20puny%20sentimentalism%22&f=false citing New York Call Magazine, Novermber 26, 1915, p. 5. https://books.google.com/books?id=gQfbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22call+november+26+1915%22++++black+stork&dq=%22call+november+26+1915%22++++black+stork&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d25mVfC4DoGLsQXDnYHgCg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA Compare: "The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race." - Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History (1922), Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, p. 49. https://books.google.com/books?id=AdcKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA49&dq=laws+of+nature+require+the+obliteration+of+the+unfit+and+human+life+is+valuable&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q15mVcfBCsfusAX-0IDQCg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=laws%20of%20nature%20require%20the%20obliteration%20of%20the%20unfit%20and%20human%20life%20is%20valuable&f=false ("Hitler thanked Grant for writing the Passing of the Great Race and said that 'the book was his Bible.'" See, Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (1994), Stefan Kühl, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195082605 ch. 8, p. 85, https://books.google.com/books?id=UGYfRv3DWuQC&pg=PA85&dq=Leon+Whitney,++bible+grant&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DmZmVdSkC4eRsAXtiIHQCw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Leon%20Whitney%2C%20%20bible%20grant&f=false Kühl cites: Leon Fradley Whitney (1894-1973), unpublished autobiography, 1971, Whitney Papers, APS, 204-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=NiX6ol8VO0oC&pg=PT264&dq=unpublished+autobiography+of+Leon+F.+Whitney,1971,+Whitney+Papers,&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VmlmVZz3BMX7sAXBjYAI&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=unpublished%20autobiography%20of%20Leon%20F.%20Whitney%2C1971%2C%20Whitney%20Papers%2C&f=false Compare also: "As a result of our modern sentimental humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy," Adolph Hitler, as quote in A.E. Samaan, From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848, Create Space, ISBN 0615747884 ISBN 9780615747880p. 318. https://books.google.com/books?id=JkXJZtI9DQoC&pg=PA318&dq=%22As+a+result+of+our+modern+sentimental+humanitarianism+we+are+trying+to+maintain+the+weak+at+the+expense+of+the+healthy.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sGBmVa_UMMyqsAXeooGIAg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22As%20a%20result%20of%20our%20modern%20sentimental%20humanitarianism%20we%20are%20trying%20to%20maintain%20the%20weak%20at%20the%20expense%20of%20the%20healthy.%22&f=false

“Shadows…bring softness to every thing. An object and its shadow are softness and hardness.”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

“Still, slavery professes only to wish its rights. It only wants to be let alone. Of course, what else could it want? And what else is the secret of the present state of the country? Under the plea of being let alone — that it was a dreadful thing and only wanted to mind its own business — it has quietly possessed itself, one after another, of all the outworks of the Constitution, and now seeks to intrench itself finally in the citadel.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

“A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua I do not trouble to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before me, but I perceive instantly the sentiment which radiates from it and which is instinct in the composition in every line and color.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 413

“Our flesh carries in it the principle of its manifestation, and this manifestation is not the appearing of the world. In its pathetic self-impressionality, in its very flesh, given to itself in the Arch-passibility of absolute Life, it reveals the one which reveals itself to itself, it is in its pathos the Arch-revelation of Life, the Parousia of the absolute. In the depths of its Night, our flesh is God.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, éd. du Seuil, 2000, p. 373
Books on Religion and Christianity, Incarnation: A philosophy of Flesh (2000)
Original: (fr) Notre chair porte en elle le principe de sa manifestation, et cette manifestation n’est pas l’apparaître du monde. En son auto-impressionnalité pathétique, en sa chair même, donnée à soi en l’Archi-passibilité de la Vie absolue, elle révèle celle-ci qui la révèle à soi, elle est en son pathos l’Archi-révélation de la Vie, la Parousie de l’absolu. Au fond de sa Nuit, notre chair est Dieu.

“Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.”

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