September 2009
38 posts
“We live by leaving behind.”
– Borges (via ariariar)
“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the...”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left...”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”
– Napoleon
“The universe which Camus has described is limited by death and man’s...”
– Thomas Hanna on Camus [x]
“There are always too many rotten pillars left standing, too much festering...”
– –Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) [pages numbers unknown; excerpt incomplete but full passage unknown]
“When we explain action in terms of desires and beliefs we are not putting...”
– Anthony Kenny : Free Will and Responsibility (via fuckyeahphilosophy) (via ataxiwardance)
“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”
– Albert Camus (via misstugui) (via ataxiwardance)
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The Histories
by Herodotus The Argives were celebrating the festival of Hera, and it was most important that the mother of the two young men should drive to the temple in her ox-cart; but it so happened that the oxen were late in coming in coming back from the field. Her two sons, therefore, as there was no time to lose, harnessed themselves to the cart and dragged it along, with their mother inside, for a...
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“THERE IS BUT ONE TRULY SERIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM, AND THAT IS SUICIDE. ...”
– Albert Camus
“The spirit is most alive when it is lost.”
– Guy Davenport, in his The Hunter Gracchus: And Other Papers on Literature and Art
“An absurd world does not have ends. One does not grow toward a destiny as the...”
– Richard Lehan, on Camus and Hemingway (article available through JSTOR if you are on a college campus)
Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with...
“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself, it was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours.
What did he fear? It was not a fear or...
“I think not,” said the hunter with a smile, and, to excuse himself, he laid his...”
– Franz Kafka’s The Hunter Gracchus
{full text but not the most preferable translation and not the source of the quotation above (in the linked-to translation, the phrasings are less than optimal, less powerful than other translations) — but that form will do, as Gracchus is mandatory...
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But consciousness is only born from conflict with...
But consciousness is only born from conflict with reality, from a rupture with the world. Consciousness must pass through separation and solitude; it is pain, but on the other hand, there is no such thing as solitary consciousness: consciousness is always linked with all humanity, it is always communal.
It is in this agonizing contradiction that the tragedy of the personality resides. A...
“…for he is the artist of his own life…”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ”White Nights”, p. 167
“After pausing for a moment, she added, “On the surface, an intelligible...”
– Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being as trans. by Michael Henry Heim, page 63
“The nihilist attitude manifests a certain truth. In this attitude one...”
– Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity AKA Simone pwns Nihilism. (via theministryoftruth) (via lapetitebaobab) (via misstugui)
“It is death which gives gambling and heroism their true meaning.”
– Albert Camus, Notebooks: 1935-1942. (via thedoingofit)
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“That choice is yours to make. That choice - the dedication to one’s highest...”
– This is John Galt Speaking, Atlas Shrugged (via nihilnoetia) (via miaculpa)
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“Death must enter life only to define it.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre
The Fire-Dwelleers
by Margaret Laurence You know something, Stacey? I damn near hit him as hard as I could. For a second, there, it was almost like an automatic reflex. I didn’t care about anything. I couldn’t even look ahead as far as any consequences. I thought afterwards - I wonder if a lot of murders are done that way?
“Young people love what is interesting and peculiar, regardless of how true or...”
– Nietzsche (via smut-to-go)
“If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of...”
– Albert Camus
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
– Albert Camus
“The world itself is not unreasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is...”
– Albert Camus 1913-1960 b.Algeria (via inthemoodforlove) (via velveteenrabbit)
yup yup yup. (via ataxiwardance)
“There was no need to stay in the lines, because there are no lines.”
– Charles Benefiel
“He seeks no verbal confirmation, understanding that there can be none.”
– from Trevor Wishart’s On Sonic Art, pg. 15-17 (click for larger excerpt) 