23784
Sun May 8 18:07:04 2022
progress can only be recorded, never experienced.
23785
Sun May 8 18:07:41 2022
‘Progress may, perhaps, be perceived by historians; it can never be felt by those actually involved in the supposed advance. The young are born into the advancing circumstances, the old take them for granted within a few months or years. Advances aren’t felt as advances. There is no gratitude — only irritation if, for any reason, the newly invented conveniences break down. Men don’t spend their time thanking God for cars; they only curse when the carburettor is choked.’
23882
Mon May 9 23:29:46 2022
Video meliora proboque; deteriora sequor.
24615
Tue May 10 21:45:54 2022
short to cover his nakedness or even his truss.
24683
Mon May 16 10:32:34 2022
Query: how to combine belief that the world is to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion? How to be simultaneously dispassionate and not indifferent, serene like an old man and active like a young one?
25021
Mon May 23 13:12:04 2022
Why should one be bullied into making choices when one didn’t want to choose; into binding oneself to a set of principles when it was so essential to be free; into committing oneself to associate with other people when as likely as not one would want to be alone; into promising in advance to be at given places at given times?
25068
Mon May 23 13:17:52 2022
‘Who tells you I want to achieve anything?’ asked Anthony. ‘I don’t. I want to be, completely. And I want to know.
25085
Mon May 23 13:22:27 2022
The contrary of a thing isn’t the contrary; oh, dear me, no! It’s the thing itself, but as it truly is.
25369
Mon May 23 23:59:35 2022
And perhaps whatever reality there is in the notion of coherent individual continuity is just a function of this physical persistence.
25372
Tue May 24 12:03:05 2022
For what is the most personal thing about a human being? Not his mind — his body. A Hearst, a Rothermere, can mould my feelings, coerce my thinking. But no amount of propaganda can make my digestion or metabolism become identical to theirs. Cogito, ergo
25372
Tue May 24 12:03:14 2022
For what is the most personal thing about a human being? Not his mind — his body. A Hearst, a Rothermere, can mould my feelings, coerce my thinking. But no amount of propaganda can make my digestion or metabolism become identical to theirs. Cogito, ergo Rothermere est. But caco, ergo sum.
25372
Tue May 24 12:03:22 2022
For what is the most personal thing about a human being? Not his mind — his body. A Hearst, a Rothermere, can mould my feelings, coerce my thinking. But no amount of propaganda can make my digestion or metabolism become identical to theirs. Cogito, ergo Rothermere est. But caco, ergo sum.
25482
Tue May 24 12:19:23 2022
creature plunged its uncoiled proboscis
25486
Tue May 24 12:20:54 2022
Again, again, with what a tireless concupiscence,
25486
Tue May 24 12:20:57 2022
again, with what a tireless concupiscence,
25534
Fri Jun 3 11:56:47 2022
‘Revolt against institutions leads temporarily to anarchy. But anarchy is slavery to nature, and to a civilized man slavery to nature is even less tolerable than slavery to institutions. The escape from anarchy is through the creation of new institutions. Sometimes there is no period of anarchy — no temporary enslavement to nature; men pass directly from one set of institutions to another. ‘Institutions are changed in an attempt to realize the Idea of Freedom. To appreciate the fact of the new slavery takes a certain time.
25537
Fri Jun 3 11:56:05 2022
‘Institutions are changed in an attempt to realize the Idea of Freedom. To appreciate the fact of the new slavery takes a certain time.
26849
Tue Jun 21 22:57:47 2022
And this in a safe urban world, where there are no risks, no physical fatigues. In a town like this, for example, one can live for years at a time without being made aware that there’s such a thing as nature. Everything’s man-made and punctual and convenient. But people can have too much of convenience; they want excitement, they want risks and surprises. Where are they going to find them under our dispensation? In money-making, in politics, in occasional war, in sport, and finally in sex. But most people can’t be speculators or active politicians; and war’s getting to be too much of a good thing; and the more elaborate and dangerous sports are only for the rich. So that sex is all that’s left. As material civilization rises, the intensity and importance of sexuality also rises. Must rise, inevitably.
28709
Thu Jun 30 16:41:29 2022
Regard the problem of reform exclusively as a matter of politics and economics, and you must approve and practise liquidation.
28730
Thu Jun 30 16:47:11 2022
what happens when an industrial society learns (a) how to make technological advances at a constantly accelerating speed, and (b) to prevent conception? Answer: it must either plan itself in accordance with general political and economic principles, or else break down. But governments with principles and plans have generally been tyrannies making use of police spies and terrorism. Must we resign ourselves to slavery and torture for the sake of coordination?
29033
Thu Jun 30 23:48:50 2022
lust is still incompatible with pacifism; can be made compatible only when it ceases to be an end in itself and becomes a means towards the unification through love of two separate individuals. Such particular union, a paradigm of union in general.
29242
Fri Jul 1 18:00:00 2022
phrase of William Penn’s. ‘Force may subdue, but Love gains; and he who forgives first wins the laurel.’
29464
Sat Jul 2 09:32:38 2022
All for love, or the world well lost; but love may be the title of nobility given to an inordinate liking for a particular person’s smell or texture, a lunatic desire for the repetition of a sensation produced by some particular dexterity.
29491
Sat Jul 2 09:41:35 2022
have we time to fill the vacuum with positive pacifism? Or, having the time, have we the ability?
29839
Sat Jul 2 10:29:15 2022
Look at the correlation between religion and diet. Christians eat meat, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco; and Christianity exalts personality, insists on the value of petitionary prayer, teaches that God feels anger and approves the persecution of heretics. It’s the same with the Jews and the Moslems. Kosher and an indignant Jehovah. Mutton and beef — and personal survival among the houris, avenging Allah and holy wars. Now look at the Buddhists. Vegetables and water. And what’s their philosophy? They don’t exalt personality; they try to transcend it.
29962
Sat Jul 2 10:46:10 2022
One item is the general belief, encouraged by mechanical and social efficiency that progress is automatic and can be imposed from outside. We, as individuals, need do nothing about it. Liquidate undesirables, distribute enough money and goods — all will be well. It is a reversion to magic, a pandering to man’s natural sloth.
30196
Sat Jul 2 13:33:38 2022
‘One ought to love everyone like an only son,’ she went on. ‘And one’s own only son as one amongst them. A son one can’t help loving more than the rest, because one has more opportunities for loving him. But the love would be different only in quantity, not in kind. One ought to love him as one loves all the other only sons — for God’s sake, not for one’s own.’
30509
Sat Jul 2 14:23:32 2022
Minds like ours can only perceive undifferentiated unity as nothing. Unescapable paradox that we should desire that n should be equal to one, but that, in fact, we should always find that one is equal to nought.
30798
Sat Apr 16 16:08:42 2022
Kansas licence plate. Come to pick our navels.’
31065
Mon Apr 18 19:31:02 2022
‘If you’re always scared of dying,’ Obispo had said, ‘you’ll surely die. Fear’s a poison; and not such a slow poison
31065
Mon Apr 18 19:31:14 2022
either.’
31082
Mon Apr 18 19:33:58 2022
With what intention? To express, symbolically, what truths about the nature of things? Again, that was the question. Where art was concerned, Jeremy said to himself, that was always the question.
31726
Sun Apr 24 12:08:26 2022
‘C’est un néant environné de Dieu, indigent de Dieu, capable de Dieu, et rempli de Dieu, s’il veut.’
31726
Sun Apr 24 12:08:34 2022
‘What is man?’ he whispered to himself. ‘C’est un néant environné de Dieu, indigent de Dieu, capable de Dieu, et rempli de Dieu, s’il veut.’
31726
Sun Apr 24 12:09:00 2022
‘What is man?’ he whispered to himself. ‘C’est un néant environné de Dieu, indigent de Dieu, capable de Dieu, et rempli de Dieu, s’il veut.’ ‘A nothingness surrounded by God, indigent and capable of God, filled with God, if he so desires.’
31785
Sun Apr 24 12:17:21 2022
For what hope, he asked himself, what faintest glimmer of hope is there for a man who really believes that ‘they hated me without a cause’ and that he had no part in his own disasters?
31813
Sun Apr 24 12:22:17 2022
if there are, even in the moral world, only causes and effects and the enormous complexity of inter-relationships — then, clearly the task of telling people what to do about their shortcomings is much more difficult. For every individual is called upon to display not only unsleeping good-will but also unsleeping intelligence.
31813
Sun Apr 24 12:23:22 2022
if there are, even in the moral world, only causes and effects and the enormous complexity of inter-relationships — then, clearly the task of telling people what to do about their shortcomings is much more difficult. For every individual is called upon to display not only unsleeping good-will but also unsleeping intelligence. And this is not all. For, if individuality is not absolute, if personalities are illusory figments of a self-will disastrously blind to the reality of a more-than-personal consciousness, of which it is the limitation and denial, then all of every human being’s efforts must be directed, in the last resort, to the actualization of that more-than-personal consciousness. So that even intelligence is not sufficient as an adjunct to good-will; there must also be the recollection which seeks to transform and transcend intelligence.
31838
Sun Apr 24 12:26:35 2022
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance; and he had failed to be vigilant.
31873
Sun Apr 24 12:32:13 2022
‘That’s his monument to a faulty pituitary.
31992
Sun Apr 24 13:02:47 2022
An ideal is merely the projection, on an enormously enlarged scale, of some aspect of personality.’
31994
Sun Apr 24 13:04:26 2022
‘And that’s true,’ he went on, ‘of every ideal except the highest, which is the ideal of liberation — liberation from personality, liberation from time and craving, liberation into union with God,
32014
Sun Apr 24 13:07:02 2022
incessant stimulation from without is a source of bondage; and so is the preoccupation with possessions.
32054
Sun Apr 24 13:11:47 2022
You can have all the virtues — that’s to say, all except the two that really matter, understanding and compassion — you can have all the others, I say, and be a thoroughly bad man.
32071
Sun Apr 24 13:14:19 2022
The feeling in question is a non-personal experience of timeless peace. Accordingly, non-personality, timelessness and peace are what it means.
32076
Sun Apr 24 13:15:08 2022
which is simply a projection of the ego. What is commonly called self-sacrifice is the sacrifice of one part of the ego to another part, one set of personal feelings and passions for another set —
32076
Sun Apr 24 13:15:25 2022
which is simply a projection of the ego. What is commonly called self-sacrifice is the sacrifice of one part of the ego to another part, one set of personal feelings and passions for another set — as when the feelings connected with money or sex are sacrificed in order that the ego may have the feelings of superiority, solidarity and hatred which are associated with patriotism, or any
32076
Sun Apr 24 13:15:32 2022
which is simply a projection of the ego. What is commonly called self-sacrifice is the sacrifice of one part of the ego to another part, one set of personal feelings and passions for another set — as when the feelings connected with money or sex are sacrificed in order that the ego may have the feelings of superiority, solidarity and hatred which are associated with patriotism, or any
32076
Sun Apr 24 13:15:37 2022
which is simply a projection of the ego. What is commonly called self-sacrifice is the sacrifice of one part of the ego to another part, one set of personal feelings and passions for another set — as when the feelings connected with money or sex are sacrificed in order that the ego may have the feelings of superiority, solidarity and hatred which are associated with patriotism, or any kind of political or religious fanaticism.’
32122
Sun Apr 24 13:21:43 2022
‘Then where ought we to fight for good?’ ‘Where good is.’ ‘But where is it?’ ‘On the level below the human and on the level above. On the animal level and on the level … well, you can take your choice of names: the level of eternity; the level, if you don’t object, of God; the level of the spirit — only that happens to be about the most ambiguous word in the language. On the lower level, good exists as the proper functioning of the organism in accordance with the laws of its own being. On the higher level, it exists in the form of a knowledge of the world without desire or aversion; it exists as the experience of eternity, as the transcendence of personality, the extension of consciousness beyond the limits imposed by the ego.
32129
Sun Apr 24 13:23:44 2022
in so far as we’re human, we’re obsessed with time, we’re passionately concerned with our personalities and with those magnified projections of our personalities which we call our policies, our ideals, our religions. And what are the results? Being obsessed with time and our egos, we are for ever craving and worrying. But nothing impairs the normal functioning of the organism like craving and revulsion, like greed and fear and worry. Directly or indirectly, most of our physical ailments and disabilities are due to worry and craving.
32472
Sun Apr 24 18:30:03 2022
Good manifests itself only on the animal level and on the level of eternity. Knowing that, you’ll realize that the best you can do on the human level is preventive. You can see that purely human activities don’t interfere too much with the manifestation of good on the other levels. That’s all.
32482
Sun Apr 24 18:32:50 2022
A home fit for animals and spirits, for physiology and disinterested consciousness.
32659
Sun Apr 24 23:53:53 2022
people don’t read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.’
32702
Sun Apr 24 23:58:30 2022
‘Creating God in our own image. It flatters our vanity, and of course we prefer vanity to understanding.
32828
Tue Apr 26 12:04:35 2022
the highest cause of all (if Mr. Propter was right) was almost terrible in its farness and strangeness.
33308
Tue May 3 23:47:57 2022
We pass our lives in the attempt to mitigate that solitude. But Propinquity is never fusion. The most populous City is but
33308
Tue May 3 23:48:08 2022
We pass our lives in the attempt to mitigate that solitude. But Propinquity is never fusion. The most populous City is but an agglomeration of wildernesses.
33308
Tue May 3 23:50:02 2022
We pass our lives in the attempt to mitigate that solitude. But Propinquity is never fusion. The most populous City is but an agglomeration of wildernesses. We exchange Words, but exchange them from prison to prison, and without hope that they will signify to others what they mean to ourselves. We marry, and there are two solitudes in the house instead of one; we beget children, and there are many solitudes. We reiterate the act of love; but again propinquity is never fusion. The most intimate contact is only of Surfaces, and we couple, as I have seen the condemned Prisoners at Newgate coupling with their Trulls, between the bars of our cages. Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power; and this we are for ever trying to do, despite the fact that by doing it we cause ourselves to feel more solitary than ever. The reality of Solitude is the same in all men, there being no mitigation of it, except in Forgetfulness, Stupidity or Illusion; but a man’s sense of Solitude is proportionate to the sense and fact of his Power. In any set of circumstances, the more Power we have, the more intensely do we feel our solitude. I have enjoyed much Power in my life.’
33456
Wed May 4 12:07:56 2022
on the strictly human level, there was nothing that deserved to be taken seriously except the suffering men inflicted upon themselves by their crimes and follies.
33700
Thu May 5 23:38:48 2022
No human society can become conspicuously better than it is now, unless it contains a fair proportion of individuals who know that their humanity isn’t the last word and who consciously attempt to transcend it. That’s why one should be profoundly pessimistic about the things most people are optimistic about — such as applied science, and social reform, and human nature as it is in the average man or woman. And that’s also why one should be profoundly optimistic about the thing they’re so pessimistic about that they don’t even know it exists — I mean, the possibility of transforming and transcending human nature. Not by evolutionary growth, not in some remote future, but at any time — here and now, if you like — by the use of properly directed intelligence and good-will.’
33726
Thu May 5 23:43:14 2022
Humanism affirms that good can be achieved on a level where it doesn’t exist and denies the fact of eternity.
33869
Sat May 7 15:56:13 2022
A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind.
33904
Sat May 7 15:59:53 2022
nationalism will always produce at least one war each generation.
34151
Sat May 7 16:36:50 2022
‘That’s the charm of art,’ Mr. Propter went on. ‘It represents only the most amiable aspects of the most talented human beings. That’s why I’ve never been able to believe that the art of any period threw much light on the life of that period.
34163
Sat May 7 16:37:45 2022
‘“The state of the country never put a man off his dinner.”’
34172
Sat May 7 16:40:18 2022
if I want a philosophy of history, I go to the psychologist.’
34174
Sat May 7 16:40:33 2022
the religious psychologist; the one who knows by direct experience that men are capable of liberation and enlightenment.
34178
Sat May 7 16:40:58 2022
‘the old, boring, unescapable truths. On the human level men live in ignorance, craving and fear. Ignorance, craving and fear result in some temporary pleasures, in many lasting miseries, in final frustration. The nature of the cure is obvious; the difficulties in the way of its achieving it, almost insuperable. We have to choose between almost insuperable difficulties on the one hand and absolutely certain misery and frustration on the other.