Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life; Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate, O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate, Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride To tread the dreary paths without a guide, As treach’rous […]
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
The most commonplace truth when it floods the whole soul, is like a revelation. Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
We do not have to understand new things, but by dint of patience, effort and method to come to understand with our whole self the truths which are evident. Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
Attention alone — that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears — is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived. Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me… And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons. And as […]
Life is a dream. Death is an awakening. Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables — meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy. C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix’d with baser matter: yes, by heaven! William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
