If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our... nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leave...s us where we were. It names things, but does not add things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Almost every man we meet requires some civility,--requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or ...philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid... in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the powe...r of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thi...rty has a balanced idea of what will power and fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exerc...ises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, "How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain... that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious--to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »