Quote of the Week
…wondering which particular fateful error we are committing at this very time, the kind of error that will at some later time look as if it was our destiny.
(Cees Nooteboom: Roads to Santiago)
Fateful Error
Tag: philosophy
Man’s Spirit
Quote of the Week:
Man’s spirit is not concerned with object; that is the business of our analytical faculties. Man’s spirit is concerned with the significance that relates objects to one another. With their totality, which only the piercing eye of the spirit can perceive. The spirit, meanwhile, alternates between total vision and absolute blindness.
Here is a man, for example, who loves his farm – but there are moments when he sees in it only a collection of unrelated objects. Here is a man who loves his wife – but there are moments when he sees in love nothing but burdens, hindrances, constraints. Here is a man who loves music – but there are moments when it cannot reach him.
What we call a nation is certainly not the sum of the regions, customs, cities, farms, and the rest that man’s intelligence is able at any moment to add up. It is a Being. But there are moments when I find myself blind to beings – even to the being called France.
Share it:
The Need to Escape (La necesidad de evasión)
The Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begun to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilisation that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.
Hay una mala literatura que nos ha hablado de la necesidad de evasión. Por supuesto, uno emprende viaje en busca de extensión; pero la extensión no se encuentra, se funda; y la evasión nunca lleva a ninguna parte.
Cuando el hombre, para sentirse hombre, tiene necesidad de correr carreras, de cantar en coro, de hacer la guerra, se impone lazos para anudarse al otro y al mundo. ¡Pero qué pobres lazos! Si una civilización es grande, colma al hombre, aunque éste permanezca inmóvil.
En este pueblecito silencioso, bajo el gris de un día de lluvia, diviso una inválida recluida que medita junto a su ventana. ¿Quién es? ¿Qué han hecho de ella? Yo juzgaría la civilización del pueblecito por la densidad de esta presencia. ¿Qué valemos, una vez inmóviles?
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Flight to Arras/ Piloto de guerra)
Share it:
Desire (Deseo)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
… every desire has enriched me more than the possession – always false – of the very object of desire.
(André Gide: The Fruits of the Earth)
“…cada deseo me ha enriquecido más que la posesión siempre falsa del objeto mismo de mi deseo.
(André Gide: Los alimentos terrestres)
Share it:
Fifty-three Minutes
Quote of the Week:
“Good morning,” said the little prince.
”Good Morning,” said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink.
“Why do you sell these pills?”
“They save so much time,” the salesclerk said. “Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week.”
“And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?”
“Whatever you like.”
“If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked,” the little prince said to himself, “I’d walk very slowly toward a water fountain…”
Share it:
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
I read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in the bath last night. This is always a recipe for disaster, but despite of long years of practice in soaking books, Omar Khayyam survived dry, probably due to the fact that he quite woke me up. (Which was not the effect I had been looking for but these things happen when you settle in for a relaxing read in the bath before going to bed.)
Continue reading “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”
Share it:
The Dark Side of Life (In Nine Haikus)
It’s February, it’s cold, it’s dark, life is s**t for so many different reasons.
In other words:
It’s Time For Poetry
I could, of course, dig out something uplifting, like Odysseas Elytis painting an Aegean heaven. I usually do, at moments like this. But you know what, not tonight. After all, life is not all song and dance, and sometimes, just ever so often, you do have every reason to sit in a dark corner and howl. (Some of you might have a lot more reasons to sit and howl than others – rid yourself of the notion that life is fair.)
Continue reading “The Dark Side of Life (In Nine Haikus)”
Share it:
A Thought of Marcus Aurelius
Quote of the Week:
And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee.
(Marcus Aurelius: The Thoughts)
A very Zen-like advice from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, aka ‘the philosopher king’.
Links: ⇒ The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, available for free download from Project Gutenberg
Share it:
Take Preventive Action (Prevenir antes de que suceda)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
That which is at rest is easily kept hold of; before a thing has given indications of its presence, it is easy to take measures against it; that which is brittle is easily broke; that which is very small is easily dispersed. Action should be taken before a thing has made its appearance, order should be secured before disorder has begun.
(Tao Te Ching 64:1)
Lo que está en reposo es fácil de retener.
Lo que no ha sucedido es fácil de resolver.
Lo que es frágil es fácil de romper.
Lo que es menudo es fácil de dispersar.
Prevenir antes de que suceda,
y ordenar antes de la confusión.(Tao te king LXIV)
Share it:
Great Task (Tarea grande)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
Confront the difficult
while it’s still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching 63
(Transl. by Stephen Mitchell)
Acomete la dificultad por su lado más fácil.
Ejecuta lo grande comenzando por lo más pequeño.Lao-Tse: Tao te king LXIII
Share it:
The Master of Cold Mountain
Don’t you know the poems of Han-shan?
They’re better for you than scripture-reading.
Cut them out and paste them on a screen,
Then you can gaze at them from time to time.
Don’t you know the poems of Han-shan? Don’t you know Han-shan, the hermit and accidental poet, the legendary Master of Cold Mountain, the early Chinese Zen philosopher?
Well, if you don’t, it’s time you got to know him. 🙂
Continue reading “The Master of Cold Mountain”
Share it:
Socrates and the Flute
Quote of the Week:
While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune of the flute.
“What will be the use of that?” he was asked.
“To know this tune before dying.”If I dare to repeat this reply long since trivialised by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence.
Emil Cioran: Drawn and Quartered
Share it:
The Journey of a Thousand Miles (El viaje de mil li)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching 64
(Transl. by Stephen Mitchell)
El árbol que casi no puede rodearse con los brazos,
brotó de un germen minúsculo.
La torre de nueve pisos,
comenzó por un montón de tierra.
El viaje de mil li empezó con un paso.Lao-Tse: Tao te king LXIV
Share it:
Quote of the Week: The God of Triangles
It seems to me, Usbek, that we never judge anything without secretly considering it in relation to our own self. I am not surprised that black men depict the devil as brilliantly white, and their own gods as coal-black, that the Venus of certain peoples has breasts that hang down to her thighs, and in short, that all idolaters have depicted their gods with human faces, and have endowed them with their own propensities. It has been quite correctly observed that if triangles were to make themselves a god, they would give him three sides.
(Montesquieu: Persian Letters)
Share it:
The Amazing Cynicism of the Tao Teh King
In Search of Tranquility
I occasionally see world weary westerners traipsing down Regent Street in loose robes and sandals chanting ‘Hare Krishna’, apparently believing that this would ease their existential angst, or, better still, solve all their problems – I blame the Beatles. Personally, I’ve never yet felt tempted to sing ‘Hare Krishna’; mainly because it’s somebody else’s cultural background and I’ve got a perfectly serviceable one of my own. Even so – and despite the Beatles – I recognise that the East has much to offer us.
Continue reading “The Amazing Cynicism of the Tao Teh King”
Share it:
Lao Tzu on Knowing Yourself (Lao-Tse sobre conocerte a ti mismo)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.If you realise that you have enough,
you are truly rich.Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, 33
(Transl. by Stephen Mitchell)
El que conoce a los demás es inteligente.
El que se conoce a sí mismo es iluminado.
El que vence a los demás es fuerte.
El que se vence a sí mismo es la fuerza.
El que se contenta es rico.Lao-Tse: Tao te king, XXXIII
Share it:
The Persian Letters of Montesquieu
Thirty-odd years ago I thought that the French author Montesquieu was enlightened, witty and clever. I based this opinion on reading his Persian Letters, an epistolary novel which details the experiences of two Persian travellers, Usbek and Rica, in France in the early part of the 18th century. Last month I picked up Persian Letters again… and found out what a change thirty-odd years made.
Continue reading “The Persian Letters of Montesquieu”
Share it:
Time and Chance Happens to Them All
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, a novel about the 18th century collapse of a bridge in Peru in which five people were killed, is neatly bracketed by the opening and the closing chapters titled, respectively, Perhaps an Accident and Perhaps an Intention. The titles refer to the question that the Franciscan monk who witnessed the disaster was wrestling with: why did those particular five die? Brother Juniper expanded a great amount of effort and energy in trying to find the answer (but if you want to know what he came up with, you’ll have to read the book).
Share it:
God’s Chosen People?
The other day, reading a history of Spain by Juan Eslava Galán, I came across the following paragraph:
Spain had become the defender of the honour of God. Theologians and thinkers (not so many of these latter) became convinced that Spain and God were united in a pact. God promoted Spain to the rank of the chosen people, protected her and granted her riches and power (the Americas) in exchange for which Spain acted as his armed arm on Earth, champion of the true faith against the error of the Protestants and the Turks.
España se había erigido en defensora del honor de Dios. Teólogos y pensadores (de estos hubo menos) llegaron al convencimiento de que España y Dios estaban unidos por un pacto. Dios la había promocionado al rango de pueblo elegido, la protegía y le otorgaba riquezas y poder (las Américas) a cambio de que ella ejerciese como su brazo armado en la Tierra, paladín de la fe verdadera contra el error de protestantes y turcos.
This notion of the pact with God and the chosen people put me strongly in mind of the Hun-Hungarian legends which I read as a child.
Continue reading “God’s Chosen People?”
Share it:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Philosophical Books (and the Death Sentence)
Okay, so there are books and there are philosophical books and when you hear the adjective philosophical in this context, you slam the book shut and run a mile or more, without so much as looking back – and by god, I don’t blame you. Twice I had to study philosophy at university and twice it bored me to tears.
Continue reading “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”
Waterblogged 