Bookshelf

Deliverance from Error

Author: Al-Ghazali · Published: 1108

“The diversity in beliefs and religions, and the variety of doctrines and sects which divide men, are like a deep ocean strewn with shipwrecks, from which very few escape safe and sound.” “The thirst for knowledge was innate in me from an early age; it was like a second nature implanted by God, without any will on my part. No sooner had I emerged from boyhood than I had already broken the fetters of tradition and freed myself from hereditary beliefs.” “The search after truth being the aim which I propose to myself, I ought in the first place to ascertain what are the bases of certitude. In the next place I recognised that certitude is the clear and complete knowledge of things, such knowledge as leaves no room for doubt nor possibility of error and conjecture, so that there remains no room in the mind for error to find an entrance.” “We cannot hope to find truth except in matters which carry their evidence in themselves—that is to say, in sense-perceptions and necessary principles; we must therefore establish these on a firm basis.” “Our sight for instance, perhaps the best practised of all our senses, observes a shadow, and finding it apparently stationary pronounces it devoid of movement. Observation and experience, however, show subsequently that a shadow moves not suddenly, it is true, but gradually and imperceptibly, so that it is never really motionless.” “Who can guarantee you that you can trust to the evidence of reason more than to that of the senses? You believed in our testimony till it was contradicted by the verdict of reason, otherwise you would have continued to believe it to this day. Well, perhaps, there is above reason another judge who, if he appeared, would convict reason of falsehood, just as reason has confuted us. And if such a third arbiter is not yet apparent, it does not follow that he does not exist.” “Do you not see that while asleep you assume your dreams to be indisputably real? Once awake, you recognise them for what they are—baseless chimeras. Who can assure you, then, of the reliability of notions which, when awake, you derive from the senses and from reason?” “In order to disentangle the knot of this difficulty, a proof was necessary. Now a proof must be based on primary assumptions, and it was precisely these of which I was in doubt.” “This unhappy state lasted about two months, during which I was, not, it is true, explicitly or by profession, but morally and essentially a thoroughgoing sceptic.” “I owed my deliverance, not to a concatenation of proofs and arguments, but to the light which God caused to penetrate into my heart—the light which illuminates the threshold of all knowledge. To suppose that certitude can be only based upon formal arguments is to limit the boundless mercy of God.” “Having once surrendered blind belief, it is impossible to return to it, for the essence of such belief is to be unconscious of itself. As soon as this unconsciousness ceases it is shattered like a glass whose fragments cannot be again reunited except by being cast again into the furnace and refashioned.” “It was plain to me that, in order to discover where the professors of any branch of knowledge have erred, one must make a profound study of that science; must equal, nay surpass, those who know most of it, so as to penetrate into secrets of it unknown to them. Only by this method can they be completely answered.” “Do not seek for the truth by means of men; find first the truth and then you will recognise those who follow it. Once in possession of the truth he examines the basis of various doctrines which come before him, and when he has found them true, he accepts them without troubling himself whether the person who teaches them is sincere or a deceiver.” “Honey does not become impure because it may happen to have been placed in the glass which the surgeon uses for cupping purposes. The impurity of blood is due, not to its contact with this glass, but to a peculiarity inherent in its own nature; this peculiarity, not existing in honey, cannot be communicated to it.” “It became clear to me that the last stage could not be reached by mere instruction, but only by transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the moral being. To define health and satiety, to penetrate their causes and conditions, is quite another thing from being well and satisfied.” “The drunken man has no idea of the nature of drunkenness, just because he is drunk and not in a condition to understand anything, while the doctor, not being under the influence of drunkenness, knows its character and laws.” “I saw that Sufism consists in experiences rather than in definitions, and that what I was lacking belonged to the domain, not of instruction, but of ecstasy and initiation.” “Still a prey to uncertainty, one day I decided to leave Bagdad and to give up everything; the next day I gave up my resolution. I advanced one step and immediately relapsed. In the morning I was sincerely resolved only to occupy myself with the future life; in the evening a crowd of carnal thoughts assailed and dispersed my resolutions.” “God caused an impediment to chain my tongue and prevented me from lecturing. Vainly I desired, in the interest of my pupils, to go on with my teaching, but my mouth became dumb. The silence to which I was condemned cast me into a violent despair; my stomach became weak; I lost all appetite; I could neither swallow a morsel of bread nor drink a drop of water.” “But beyond reason and at a higher level a new faculty of vision is bestowed upon him, by which he perceives invisible things, the secrets of the future and other concepts as inaccessible to reason as the concepts of reason are inaccessible to mere discrimination and what is perceived by discrimination to the senses.”

philosophy · islam · autobiography · epistemology

White Nights

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky · Published: 1848

“The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky.” “They, of course, do not know me, but I know them. I know them intimately, I have almost made a study of their faces, and am delighted when they are gay, and downcast when they are under a cloud.” “I don't know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.” “I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year.” “That life is a mixture of something purely fantastic, fervently ideal, with something dingily prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar.” “Let me tell you that in these corners live strange people—dreamers. The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.” “For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or, anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature, which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise.” “A fresh dream—fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison!” “He thinks that this is a poor pitiful life, not foreseeing that for him too, maybe, sometime the mournful hour may strike, when for one day of that pitiful life he would give all his years of phantasy.” “He desires nothing, because he is superior to all desire, because he has everything, because he is satiated, because he is the artist of his own life, and creates it for himself every hour to suit his latest whim.” “One deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real true passion is stirring one's soul; one unconsciously believes that there is something living, tangible in one's immaterial dreams!” “At times such misery comes over me, such misery. Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real.” “One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments.” “And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire.” “And one remembers that then one's dreams were sad, and though the past was no better one feels as though it had somehow been better, and that life was more peaceful, that one was free from the black thoughts that haunt one now.” “Where have you buried your best days? Have you lived or not?” “It will be sad to be left alone, utterly alone, and to have not even anything to regret—nothing, absolutely nothing ... for all that you have lost, all that, all was nothing, stupid, simple nullity, there has been nothing but dreams!” “So when we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is not destroyed but concentrated.” “Such fondness at certain moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka! Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes!” “Why not say straight out what is in one's heart, when one knows that one is not speaking idly? As it is every one seems harsher than he really is, as though all were afraid of doing injustice to their feelings, by being too quick to express them.” “The whole vista of my future flashed before me so sad and forbidding, and I saw myself just as I was now, fifteen years hence, older, in the same room, just as solitary, with the same Matrona grown no cleverer for those fifteen years.” “My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?”

novella · russian-novel · romance

Notes from Underground

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky · Published: 1864

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.” “I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!” “It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.” “An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.” “I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.” “The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.” “In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.” “There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination.” “Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment. I had toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point.” “Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four?” “Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.” “You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded.” “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.” “Reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses.” “The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism!” “You believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed—a palace at which one will not be able to put out one's tongue or make a long nose on the sly. And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this edifice, that it is of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one cannot put one's tongue out at it even on the sly.” “While I am alive and have desires I would rather my hand were withered off than bring one brick to such a building!” “Perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death.” “Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction.” “The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground!” “Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud.” “It was a regular martyrdom, a continual, intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant and direct sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty, disgusting fly—more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in feeling than any of them, of course—but a fly that was continually making way for everyone.” “By then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that love really consists in the right—freely given by the beloved object—to tyrannise over her.” “And will it not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for ever? Resentment—why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful consciousness!” “We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.”

novel · russian-novel · existentialism

Crime and Punishment

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky · Published: 1866

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.” “It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.” “All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom.” “It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.” “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.” “Poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue, and that that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice.” “In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary—never—no one.” “Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?” “And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink. I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!” “This is why I receive them, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.” “Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.” “You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions!” “The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde!” “That sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind more terrible than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed.” “Lord, show me my path—I renounce that accursed dream of mine.” “Mother, sister—how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can't bear them near me.” “Do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind?” “I sat in my room like a spider.” “I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to myself.” “Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.” “What should I be without God?” “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.” “Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, "I am a murderer!"” “We are both accursed, let us go our way together!” “We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is?” “Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself.” “The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.” “Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime.” “Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands.” “Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.”

novel · russian-novel · moral-philosophy · guilt

The Brothers Karamazov

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky · Published: 1880

“Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.” “The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.” “Socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.” “For the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall down before and worship.” “A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill—he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness.” “There is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the peasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent in wailing. Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness.” “Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to remember that your little son is one of the angels of God.” “Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin.” “I love humanity, but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together.” “Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself.” “Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage.” “There was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.” “With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears of emotion in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner!"” “A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman's body, or even with a part of a woman's body, and he'll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.” “He has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.” “Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.” “I can't endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence.” “What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.” “When I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded.” “What's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.” “It's not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept. I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage—but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't accept it.” “The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.” “People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.” “In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden—the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice.” “I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself.” “Surely I haven't suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else.” “If the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.” “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.” “Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom.” “Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.” “When man rejects miracle he rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic and infidel.” “By showing him so much respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst ask far too much from him—Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself! Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter.” “We shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves.” “There are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. They live upon their vindictive pride like a starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body.” “He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy.”

novel · russian-novel · religion · existentialism

The Gay Science

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche · Published: 1882

“Life — that is: continually shedding something that wants to die; life — that is: being cruel and inexorable against everything in us that becomes weak and old, and not only in us.” “We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live — by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith no one could endure living. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument; the conditions of life might include error.” “What does your conscience say? — "You shall become the person you are."” “What is the seal of liberation? — No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.” “What makes one heroic? — Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.” “The greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into definite channels by his instincts.” “There is intellectual conscience: most people lack it; but those who do not lack it are as solitary in the largest cities as they are in the desert.” “We exceptions are the danger; we eternally need to be defended — but we have nothing in common with the rule, and we cannot become the rule without ceasing to be the exception we are.” “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!” “For believe me — the secret of harvesting from existence the greatest fecundity and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!” “A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.” “We need art lest we perish from the truth.” “Whoever finds himself depths must struggle to attain clarity; whoever wishes to seem deep to the multitude must struggle to be obscure. For the multitude takes everything to be deep whose ground it cannot see; the multitude is so timid and so unwilling to enter the water.” “What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. The way human beings usually are, it takes a name to make something visible to them.” “We must therefore discover the hero, no less than the fool, hidden in our passion for knowledge.” “Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.” “Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who trespasses.” “Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.” “The total character of the world, in contrast, is to all eternity chaos — in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms.” “But when shall we be done with our caution and care? When will all these shadows of God no longer darken us? When will we have completely de-deified nature? When may we begin to naturalize humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?” “Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny.” “The strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life.” “We say it is "explanation," but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better — we explain just as little as our predecessors.” “The greatest events — these are not our loudest, but our stillest hours.” “Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.” “The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” “A criticism of all our religious feelings is at present no longer made by reason, but by our taste.” “Wherever we meet with a morality, we find a valuation and order of rank of human drives and acts. These valuations and orders of rank are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd: that which benefits it most — and second, third, and fourth most — is also the highest standard for the value of all individuals.” “Knowledge has become for us a passion that does not shrink from any sacrifice and that fundamentally fears nothing but its own extinction.” “To "give style" to one's character — a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses that their nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.” “For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain his satisfaction with himself — only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is always ready to revenge himself.” “We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves to ourselves: there is a good reason for this. We have never sought ourselves — how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?” “Live in concealment so that you can live for yourself. Live in ignorance about what seems most important to your age! Place at least the skin of three centuries between yourself and today.” “Whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal: all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities, and generalization.” “The world has become "infinite" for us all over again, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it may include infinite interpretations.”

philosophy · aphorism

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche · Published: 1883

“Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.” “It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!” “I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.” “I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.” “Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.” “Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker:—he, however, is the creator.” “To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.” “Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.” “Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.” “Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.” “Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.” “But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.” “An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done.” “Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.” “We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.” “The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep—into the evil.” “Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know WHAT hath fallen into their depths.” “Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.” “Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?” “Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!” “But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.” “To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!” “Not only the rationality of millenniums—also their madness, breaketh out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir.” “Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you!” “Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!” “The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!” “Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.” “Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!” “Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth it increase its own knowledge,—did ye know that before?” “Ye seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly floweth all deep knowledge. Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot hands and handlers.” “Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and unchanged throughout the years.” “And only where there are graves are there resurrections.” “Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of living things.” “He who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces. Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however, is the creating good.” “To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus would I have it!"—that only do I call redemption!”

philosophy · existentialism · aphorism

Beyond Good and Evil

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche · Published: 1886

“Supposing that truth is a woman — what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women?” “Granted that we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?” “The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment; the question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating.” “To recognize untruth as a condition of life — that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.” “It has gradually become clear to me that every great philosophy has so far been the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” “A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.” “You want to live "according to nature"? Imagine indifference itself as a power — how could you live according to this indifference?” “A thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish.” “The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much "truth" he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.” “Something might be true, even if it is also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree; indeed, it might be part of the essential nature of existence that to understand it completely would lead to our own destruction.” “Christianity is Platonism for the "people."” “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.” “There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.” “Insanity in individuals is something rare — but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.” “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.” “"I have done that," says my memory. "I cannot have done that," says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.” “Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.” “He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser.” “One no longer loves one's knowledge enough when one has communicated it.” “Love of one is a piece of barbarism: for it is practised at the expense of all others. Love of God likewise.” “Whoever has reached his ideal precisely thereby surpasses it.” “The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.” “The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have "improved" in the meantime.” “Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy; around the demigod, into a satyr-play; and around God — what? perhaps into "world"?” “He who cannot find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.” “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it, but degenerated into vice.” “By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.” “Blessed are the forgetful, for they "get the better" even of their blunders.” “The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it.” “The essential thing "in heaven and on earth" is, apparently, that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” “Without the pathos of distance, that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen — the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself.” “A human being who strives for something great regards everybody he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and hindrance — or as a temporary resting-place.” “The noble soul has reverence for itself.” “Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy: every opinion is also a hiding-place, every word is also a mask.” “The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up to the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.”

philosophy · moral-philosophy · aphorism

On the Genealogy of Morals

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche · Published: 1887

“It was from this pathos of distance that they first claimed the right to create values and give these values names: usefulness was none of their concern!” “The seigneurial privilege of giving names even allows us to conceive of the origin of language itself as a manifestation of the power of the rulers: they say this is so and so, they set their seal on everything and every occurrence with a sound and thereby take possession of it, as it were.” “The history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect of the powerless injected into it.” “The beginning of the slaves' revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge.” “His soul squints; his mind loves dark corners, secret paths and back-doors, everything secretive appeals to him as being his world, his security, his comfort; he knows all about keeping quiet, not forgetting, waiting, temporarily humbling and abasing himself.” “He insists on having his enemy to himself, as a mark of distinction, indeed he will tolerate as enemies none other than such as have nothing to be despised and a great deal to be honoured.” “A quantum of force is just such a quantum of drive, will, action, in fact it is nothing but this driving, willing and acting, and only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it), which construes and misconstrues all actions as conditional upon an agency, a subject, can make it appear otherwise.” “There is no being behind the deed, its effect and what becomes of it; the doer is invented as an afterthought, — the doing is everything.” “The reason the subject (or, as we more colloquially say, the soul) has been, until now, the best doctrine on earth, is perhaps because it facilitated that sublime self-deception whereby the majority of the dying, the weak and the oppressed of every kind could construe weakness itself as freedom, and their particular mode of existence as an accomplishment.” “In losing our fear of man we have also lost our love for him, our respect for him, our hope in him and even our will to be man. The sight of man now makes us tired — what is nihilism today if it is not that?” “To breed an animal with the prerogative to promise — is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind?” “Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word, to which we owe the fact that what we simply live through, experience, take in, no more enters our consciousness during digestion than does the thousand-fold process which takes place with our physical consumption of food.” “A thing must be burnt in so that it stays in the memory: only something that continues to hurt stays in the memory — that is a proposition from the oldest (and unfortunately the longest-lived) psychology on earth.” “Ah, reason, solemnity, mastering of emotions, this really dismal thing called reflection, all these privileges and splendours man has: what a price had to be paid for them! how much blood and horror lies at the basis of all good things!” “In this sphere of legal obligations, then, the moral conceptual world of debt, conscience, duty, sacred duty, has its breeding ground — all began with a thorough and prolonged bloodletting, like the beginning of all great things on earth. And may we not add that this world has really never quite lost a certain odour of blood and torture? (not even with old Kant: the categorical imperative smells of cruelty . . .).” “The heavens darkened over man in direct proportion to the increase in his feeling shame at being man.” “What actually arouses indignation over suffering is not the suffering itself, but the senselessness of suffering.” “As the power and self-confidence of a community grows, its penal law becomes more lenient; if the former is weakened or endangered, harsher forms of the latter will re-emerge.” “Justice, which began by saying Everything can be paid off, everything must be paid off, ends by turning a blind eye and letting off those unable to pay, — it ends, like every good thing on earth, by sublimating itself.” “The origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo separate; that anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it.” “All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated defy definition; only something which has no history can be defined.” “All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards — this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his soul. The whole inner world, originally stretched thinly as though between two layers of skin, was expanded and extended itself and gained depth, breadth and height in proportion to the degree that the external discharge of man's instincts was obstructed.” “Lacking external enemies and obstacles, and forced into the oppressive narrowness and conformity of custom, man impatiently ripped himself apart, persecuted himself, gnawed at himself, gave himself no peace and abused himself, this animal who battered himself raw on the bars of his cage and who is supposed to be tamed; man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert, has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture-chamber, an unsafe and hazardous wilderness.” “He is merely the precondition for the work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the manure and fertilizer on which it grows, — and as such, he is something we have to forget about in most cases if we want to enjoy the work.” “There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival knowing; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our concept of the thing, our objectivity.”

philosophy · moral-philosophy

Shikwa & Jawab-e-Shikwa

Author: Muhammad Iqbal · Published: 1913

“My theme makes me bold, makes my tongue more eloquent; dust be in my mouth, against Allah I make complaint.” “Then spake a Voice Compassionate: Your tale enkindles pain, your cup is brimming full with tears which you could not contain.” “We are like the silent lute whose chords are full of voice; when grief wells up to our lips, we speak; we have no choice.” “Behold, my hands are full of gifts, but who comes seeking here? And how shall I the right road show when there's no traveller?” “Lord God! We are Your faithful servants, for a while with us bear; it is in our nature to always praise You, a small plaint also hear.” “Eternal is the Law of God and Justice is its name; should infidels like Muslims live, the meed shall be the same.” “We made our Azan's call resound beneath proud spires in Western lands, and made that magic melody thrill over Afric's burning sands.” “Those idol-breakers all have gone, you idolaters are; Abraham was the father, you his sons, are but Azar.” “On all men's minds we set Your seal, Your tawhid's firm and sure impress -- the selfsame message preached our lips when swords danced high in battle's stress.” “And one your Ka'ba, one your God, and one your great Quran; yet, still, divided each from each, lives every Mussalman.” “Whose was the fateful wrath which made all idols shrink in terror just? "There is no god but God," they cried, as crumbling down they kissed the dust.” “You split yourselves in countless sects, in classes high and low; think you the world its gifts will still on such as you bestow?” “Sultan and slave in single file stood side by side; then no servant was nor master, nothing did them divide.” “You are known as Syed, and Mughal, you call yourselves Pathan; but can you truly claim as well the name of Mussalman?” “We who, from tyrant ignorance, the prisoned human race unchained, who removed from this world's book the leaves which were with falsehood stained.” “Go, seek some constant mistress now, to her a new bond sign; Muhammad's universal creed to narrow bounds confine!” “We who with myriad sajdas filled Your Holy Kaaba's hallowed shrine, whose bosoms reverently held Your great and glorious Book Divine.” “To pray to me at break of day you now an ordeal deem; your morning slumber sweeter far, yet you would faithful seem.” “Yet see how still Your bounties rain on roofs of unbelieving clans, while strikes Your thunder-bolt the homes of all-forbearing Mussalmans!” “From Christians you have learnt your style, your culture from Hindus; how can a race as Muslims pass who shame even the Jews?” “Where are those favours which You once upon our grateful hearts didst pour? Why cherishest You not, O Lord, the Faithful as in days of yore?” “The rich are drunk with wine of wealth, their God they hardly know; it is because the poor yet live that wells of Faith still flow.” “Then Stranger! why estranged today the bond of love between You and Yours? Upon the Faithful, O Unkind, why frowns Your eye of wrath Divine?” “They fought for honour, self-respect; yours the self-slayer's knife. You shun the ties of brotherhood, they cherished more than life.” “Ah, why within our deadened hearts that holy flame today leaps not? Though still those burnt-out victims we which once we were, have You forgot?” “But look! A hint of russet hue, brightening the eastern skies; the glow on yon horizon's brow heralds a new sunrise.” “The passion for the flame's embrace -- Your moths -- ah, let them once more know; and bid Your ancient lightning strike and set these ash-cold hearts aglow!” “This is no time for idle rest, much yet remains undone; the lamp of Tawhid needs your touch to make it shame the sun.” “Let Faithful hearts re-plight their troth, and forge afresh their bond Divine; let in the long-parched heart of each the old thirst wake for sweet old wine!” “To my Muhammad be but true, and you have conquered me; the world is nothing, you will command my Pen of Destiny.”

poetry · islam · urdu-poetry

The Secrets of the Self

Author: Muhammad Iqbal · Published: 1915

“The Gardener taught me to sing with power, He sowed a verse and reaped a sword.” “I have no need of the ear of To-day, I am the voice of the poet of To-morrow.” “My being was as an unfinished statue, Uncomely, worthless, good for nothing. Love chiselled me: I became a man And gained knowledge of the nature of the universe.” “The form of existence is an effect of the Self, Whatsoever thou seest is a secret of the Self.” “When the Self awoke to consciousness, It revealed the universe of Thought. A hundred worlds are hidden in its essence: Self-affirmation brings Not-self to light.” “When a drop of water gets the Self's lesson by heart, It makes its worthless existence a pearl.” “When the mountain loses its self, it turns into sands And complains that the sea surges over it; But the wave, so long as it remains a wave in the sea's bosom, Makes itself a rider on the sea's back.” “Life is latent in seeking, Its origin is hidden in desire.” “Negation of desire is death to the living, Even as absence of burning extinguishes the flame.” “The luminous point whose name is the Self Is the life-spark beneath our dust. By Love it is made more lasting, More living, more burning, more glowing.” “The hardest rocks are shivered by Love's glance: Love of God at last becomes wholly God.” “By asking, poverty is made more abject; By begging, the beggar is made poorer. Asking disintegrates the Self And deprives of illumination the Sinai-bush of the Self.” “The wakeful tiger was lulled to slumber by the sheep's charm: He called his decline Moral Culture.” “Plato, the prime ascetic and sage, Was one of that ancient flock of sheep. His Pegasus went astray in the darkness of philosophy And galloped over the mountains of Being.” “'Twas his work to dissolve the structure of Life And cut the bough of Life's fair tree asunder. The thought of Plato regarded loss as profit, His philosophy declared that being is not-being.” “Whoso would master the sun and stars, Let him make himself a prisoner of Law! Liberty is the fruit of compulsion.” “He that does not command himself Becomes a receiver of commands from others.” “'Tis sweet to be God's vicegerent in the world And exercise sway over the elements. God's vicegerent is as the soul of the universe, His being is the shadow of the Greatest Name.” “To become earth is the creed of a moth; Be a conqueror of earth; that alone is worthy of a man. Thou art soft as a rose. Become hard as a stone, That thou mayst be the foundation of the wall of the garden!” “Build thy clay into a Man, Build thy Man into a World!” “The pith of Life is contained in action, To delight in creation is the law of Life. Arise and create a new world! Wrap thyself in flames, be an Abraham!” “I will declare the truth: thine enemy is thy friend; His existence crowns thee with glory. Whosoever knows the states of the Self Considers a powerful enemy to be a blessing from God.” “Never for an instant neglect Self-preservation: Be a diamond, not a dewdrop!” “Phenomena arise from the march of Time, Life is a part of the contents of Time's consciousness. The cause of Time is not the revolution of the sun: Time is everlasting, but the sun does not last for ever.” “Appear, O rider of Destiny! Appear, O light of the dark realm of Change! Illumine the scene of existence, Dwell in the blackness of our eyes!”

poetry · islam · philosophy

The Metamorphosis

Author: Franz Kafka · Published: 1915

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.” “"Oh, God," he thought, "what a strenuous career it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them. It can all go to Hell!"” “If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk!” “There was no sound of the door banging shut again; they must have left it open; people often do in homes where something awful has happened.” “"What a quiet life it is the family lead," said Gregor to himself, and, gazing into the darkness, felt a great pride that he was able to provide a life like that in such a nice home for his sister and parents. But what now, if all this peace and wealth and comfort should come to a horrible and frightening end?” “Hardly aware of what he was doing other than a slight feeling of shame, he hurried under the couch. It pressed down on his back a little, and he was no longer able to lift his head, but he nonetheless felt immediately at ease and his only regret was that his body was too broad to get it all underneath.” “For the time being he must remain calm, he must show patience and the greatest consideration so that his family could bear the unpleasantness that he, in his present condition, was forced to impose on them.” “"Am I less sensitive than I used to be, then?" he thought, and was already sucking greedily at the cheese which had immediately, almost compellingly, attracted him much more than the other foods on the newspaper.” “They had even got used to it, both Gregor and the family, they took the money with gratitude and he was glad to provide it, although there was no longer much warm affection given in return.” “He had used to feel a great sense of freedom from doing this, but doing it now was obviously something more remembered than experienced, as what he actually saw in this way was becoming less distinct every day, even things that were quite near.” “Had he really wanted to transform his room into a cave, a warm room fitted out with the nice furniture he had inherited? That would have let him crawl around unimpeded in any direction, but it would also have let him quickly forget his past when he had still been human.” “No-one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor's flesh, so it remained there as a visible reminder of his injury. He had suffered it there for more than a month, and his condition seemed serious enough to remind even his father that Gregor, despite his current sad and revolting form, was a family member who could not be treated as an enemy.” “With a kind of stubbornness, Gregor's father refused to take his uniform off even at home; while his nightgown hung unused on its peg Gregor's father would slumber where he was, fully dressed, as if always ready to serve and expecting to hear the voice of his superior even here.” “They carried out absolutely everything that the world expects from poor people, Gregor's father brought bank employees their breakfast, his mother sacrificed herself by washing clothes for strangers, his sister ran back and forth behind her desk at the behest of the customers, but they just did not have the strength to do any more.” “Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for.” “"It's got to go," shouted his sister, "that's the only way, Father. You've got to get rid of the idea that that's Gregor. We've only harmed ourselves by believing it for so long. How can that be Gregor? If it were Gregor he would have seen long ago that it's not possible for human beings to live with an animal like that and he would have gone of his own free will."” “He thought back of his family with emotion and love. If it was possible, he felt that he must go away even more strongly than his sister. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful rumination until he heard the clock tower strike three in the morning.” “And, as if in confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete was the first to get up and stretch out her young body.”

novella · absurdism · alienation · german-novel

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Author: Muhammad Iqbal · Published: 1930

“Nor is there any reason to suppose that thought and intuition are essentially opposed to each other. They spring up from the same root and complement each other. The one grasps Reality piecemeal, the other grasps it in its wholeness. The one fixes its gaze on the eternal, the other on the temporal aspect of Reality.” “Both Kant and Ghazali failed to see that thought, in the very act of knowledge, passes beyond its own finitude. The finitudes of Nature are reciprocally exclusive. Not so the finitudes of thought which is, in its essential nature, incapable of limitation and cannot remain imprisoned in the narrow circuit of its own individuality.” “It is, however, possible to take thought not as a principle which organizes and integrates its material from the outside, but as a potency which is formative of the very being of its material. Thus regarded thought or idea is not alien to the original nature of things; it is their ultimate ground and constitutes the very essence of their being.” “Nature is not a static fact situated in an a-dynamic void, but a structure of events possessing the character of a continuous creative flow which thought cuts up into isolated immobilities out of whose mutual relations arise the concepts of space and time.” “Einstein's theory, which, as a scientific theory, deals only with the structure of things, throws no light on the ultimate nature of things which possess that structure.” “A theory which takes time to be a kind of fourth dimension of space must, it seems, regard the future as something already given, as indubitably fixed as the past. Time as a free creative movement has no meaning for the theory. It does not pass. Events do not happen; we simply meet them.” “The various natural sciences are like so many vultures falling on the dead body of Nature, and each running away with a piece of its flesh. Nature as the subject of science is a highly artificial affair, and this artificiality is the result of that selective process to which science must subject her in the interests of precision.” “Pure time, then, as revealed by a deeper analysis of our conscious experience, is not a string of separate, reversible instants; it is an organic whole in which the past is not left behind, but is moving along with, and operating in, the present. And the future is given to it not as lying before, yet to be traversed; it is given only in the sense that it is present in its nature as an open possibility.” “Destiny is time regarded as prior to the disclosure of its possibilities. It is time freed from the net of causal sequence — the diagrammatic character which the logical understanding imposes on it. In one word, it is time as felt and not as thought and calculated.” “If time is real, and not a mere repetition of homogeneous moments which make conscious experience a delusion, then every moment in the life of Reality is original, giving birth to what is absolutely novel and unforeseeable. To exist in real time is not to be bound by the fetters of serial time, but to create it from moment to moment and to be absolutely free and original in creation.” “Bergson's analysis of our conscious experience reveals its inadequacy. He regards conscious experience as the past moving along with and operating in the present. He ignores that the unity of consciousness has a forward looking aspect also. Life is only a series of acts of attention, and an act of attention is inexplicable without reference to a purpose, conscious or unconscious.” “To exist in pure duration is to be a self, and to be a self is to be able to say 'I am'. Only that truly exists which can say 'I am'. It is the degree of the intuition of 'I-amness' that determines the place of a thing in the scale of being.” “Nature is to the Divine Self as character is to the human self. The knowledge of Nature is the knowledge of God's behaviour. In our observation of Nature we are virtually seeking a kind of intimacy with the Absolute Ego; and this is only another form of worship.” “Real time is not serial time to which the distinction of past, present, and future is essential; it is pure duration, i.e. change without succession, which McTaggart's argument does not touch. Serial time is pure duration pulverized by thought — a kind of device by which Reality exposes its ceaseless creative activity to quantitative measurement.” “The emergence of egos endowed with the power of spontaneous and hence unforeseeable action is, in a sense, a limitation on the freedom of the all-inclusive Ego. But this limitation is not externally imposed. It is born out of His own creative freedom whereby He has chosen finite egos to be participators of His life, power, and freedom.” “Prayer as a means of spiritual illumination is a normal vital act by which the little island of our personality suddenly discovers its situation in a larger whole of life.” “My real personality is not a thing; it is an act. My experience is only a series of acts, mutually referring to one another, and held together by the unity of a directive purpose. My whole reality lies in my directive attitude.” “Personal immortality, then, is not ours as of right; it is to be achieved by personal effort. Man is only a candidate for it. There are no pleasure-giving and pain-giving acts; there are only ego-sustaining and ego-dissolving acts. It is the deed that prepares the ego for dissolution, or disciplines him for a future career.” “True infinity does not mean infinite extension which cannot be conceived without embracing all available finite extensions. Its nature consists in intensity and not extensity; and the moment we fix our gaze on intensity, we begin to see that the finite ego must be distinct, though not isolated, from the Infinite.” “The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of 'unitary experience'; and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large. The prophet's return is creative. He returns to insert himself into the sweep of time with a view to control the forces of history, and thereby to create a fresh world of ideals.” “In Islam prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition. This involves the keen perception that life cannot for ever be kept in leading strings; that, in order to achieve full self-consciousness, man must finally be thrown back on his own resources.” “Whatever may be the criterion by which to judge the forward steps of a creative movement, the movement itself, if conceived as cyclic, ceases to be creative. Eternal recurrence is not eternal creation; it is eternal repetition.” “The truth, however, is that matter is spirit in space-time reference. The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and ideal of such acting.” “Wholly overshadowed by the results of his intellectual activity, the modern man has ceased to live soulfully, i.e. from within. In the domain of thought he is living in open conflict with himself; and in the domain of economic and political life he is living in open conflict with others. Absorbed in the 'fact', that is to say, the optically present source of sensation, he is entirely cut off from the unplumbed depths of his own being.” “The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something. It is in the ego's effort to be something that he discovers his final opportunity to sharpen his objectivity and acquire a more fundamental 'I am' which finds evidence of its reality not in the Cartesian 'I think' but in the Kantian 'I can.'”

philosophy · islam · philosophy-of-religion

The Myth of Sisyphus

Author: Albert Camus · Published: 1942

“A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world.” “This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” “This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.” “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” “The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.” “What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.” “Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.” “A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.” “This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled.” “In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing.” “One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.” “The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future. Henceforth this is the reason for my inner freedom.” “From Pandora's box, hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself.” “I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument.” “It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.” “To a man devoid of blinders, there is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it.” “The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State.” “In the absurd world the value of a notion or of a life is measured by its sterility.” “The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions.” “Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.” “If the world were clear, art would not exist.” “Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective.” “Art can never be so well served as by a negative thought.” “Above all, a man's thought is his nostalgia.” “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”

philosophy · absurdism · existentialism

The Stranger

Author: Albert Camus · Published: 1942

“It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” “With death so near, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again.” “After all, there wasn't anyone in the world who had the right to cry over her.” “I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.” “A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so.” “That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn't make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to.” “He asked me if I wasn't interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another.” “I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.” “On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but just in time, I remembered that I had killed a man.” “I blurted out that it was because of the sun.” “My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started.” “Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.” “I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me.” “He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man.” “A man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison.” “When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man.” “I would listen to my heartbeat. I couldn't imagine that this faint throbbing which had been with me for so long would ever cease.” “The machine destroyed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and with great precision.” “I couldn't quite understand how an ordinary man's good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.” “My fate was being decided without anyone so much as asking my opinion.” “None of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head.” “Then, in the dark hour before dawn, sirens blared. They were announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me.”

novel · absurdism · existentialism · french-novel

The Denial of Death

Author: Ernest Becker · Published: 1973

“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity — activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.” “The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.” “The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image.” “Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning.” “To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life.” “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.” “This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression — and with all this yet to die.” “It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.” “The vital lie of character is the first line of defense that protects us from the painful awareness of our helplessness.” “We repress our bodies to purchase a soul that time cannot destroy; we sacrifice pleasure to buy immortality; we encapsulate ourselves to avoid death.” “Life escapes us while we huddle within the defended fortress of character.” “He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness.” “He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror.” “The man with the clear head looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.” “Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives, just as their society maps these problems out for them. They tranquilize themselves with the trivial — and so they can lead normal lives.” “The transference object always looms larger than life size because it represents all of life and hence all of one's fate.” “Modern man's dependency on the love partner is a result of the loss of spiritual ideologies; he needs somebody, some "individual ideology of justification" to replace the declining "collective ideologies."” “After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption—nothing less.” “No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood, and the attempt has to take its toll in some way on both parties.” “"She lessens" = "I die." This is the reason for so much bitterness, shortness of temper and recrimination in our daily family lives.” “Too much possibility is the attempt by the person to overvalue the powers of the symbolic self. What we call schizophrenia is an attempt by the symbolic self to deny the limitations of the finite body.” “The depressed person is so afraid of being himself, so fearful of exerting his own individuality, of insisting on what might be his own meanings, his own conditions for living, that he seems literally stupid.” “Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude—even dishonor and betrayal—to real possibility?” “Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility, especially when the choice comes too late in life for one to be able to start over again.” “If your god is discredited, you yourself die; the evil must be in yourself and not in your god, so that you may live. With guilt you lose some of your life but avoid the greater evil of death.” “Creative work is itself done under a compulsion often indistinguishable from a purely clinical obsession. What we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed.” “The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum. Workers plunge into their work with equanimity and lightheartedness because it drowns out something more ominous.” “All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes.” “If repression makes an untenable life liveable, self-knowledge can entirely destroy it for some people.” “The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something—an object or ourselves—and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.”

philosophy · psychology · existentialism · death