Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinit...esimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum th...eory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was continuing to shrink. To become, what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being, or was I the man of the future?...... So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite, but suddenly I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man's conception, not nature's, and I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation--it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest--I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist. Even athletes need to sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a se...t of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I try to make a rough music, a dance of the mind, a calculus of the emotions, a driving beat of praise out of the pain and mystery... that surround me and become me. My poems are meant to make your mind get up and shout.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life direct...is what Flaubert and Joyce have convinced themselves the man may never get quite clear of but the artist has nothing... to do with. What they can't admit is that t is overrated: which artists, faking and fumbling it together out of spit and toothpicks, should know best of all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »