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August 30, 2007
society is a joint-stock company
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
--ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance
Posted by ali at 10:02 PM | TrackBack
trust thyself
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
--ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance
Posted by ali at 10:00 PM | TrackBack
speak your latent conviction
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.
--ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance
Posted by ali at 9:58 PM | TrackBack
and I worshipped them in silence
In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely understood at all. Though I understood the words I could never fathom their full significance. It remained, as it were, beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning melancholy that at times approached insufferable sorrow; that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without tears. . . that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was always a yearning anguish: why could I not hate them without loving them? why could I not help forgiving them? and in my love for them there was a yearning grief: why could I not love them without hating them? They listened to me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I knew that they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence my heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the feeling of the fullness of life took my breath away, and I worshipped them in silence.
--dostoevsky, the dream of a ridiculous man
translated by constance garnett
Posted by ali at 9:53 PM | TrackBack
August 27, 2007
people are alone in the world
insensibility. oh, nature! people are alone in the world. that’s what is so dreadful. “is there a living man on the plain?” cries the russian legendary hero. i, too, echo the same cry, but no one answers. they say the sun brings life to the universe. the sun will rise and—look at it. isn’t it dead? everything is dead. dead men are everywhere. there are only people in the world, and all around them is silence—that’s what the earth is! “men love one another!”—who said that? whose commandment is it? the pendulum is ticking away unfeelingly, dismally. two o’clock in the morning. her dear little boots stand by her little bed, as though waiting for her. . . . no, seriously, when they take her away tomorrow, what’s to become of me?
--dostoevsky, a gently creature
Posted by ali at 10:42 AM | TrackBack
August 26, 2007
the dream of a curious man
do you know, as i do, how suffering can be savoured, and do you make people say of you, ‘what a strange man!’ i was going to die. my amorous soul felt desire mingled with horror, an illness peculiar to itself;
anguish and lively hope, without any impulse to protest. the lower the fatal hourglass sank, the more savage and delicious was my torture; all my heart was tearing itself away from the familiar world.
i was like the child desperate to see the play, hating the curtain as one hates a barrier … at last the cold truth revealed itself:
i had died without surprise, and the terrible dawn was enfolding me. – ‘what! is that all?’ the curtain had risen and i was still waiting.
--charles baudelaire
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August 10, 2007
humanity of the moment
there is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.
--robert frank
Posted by ali at 12:05 PM | TrackBack
ansel adams and robert frank
quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. that's not quality, that's a kind of quality. the pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy--the tone range isn't right and things like that--but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. but the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. it's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention.
--elliott erwitt
Posted by ali at 12:02 PM | TrackBack
August 8, 2007
i shall see her today!
‘i shall see her today!’ i exclaim in the mornings when i raise and look up the beautiful sun with a glad heart; ‘i shall see her today!’ and then i have no other wishes all day long. everything, everything is included in that one hope.
in vain i stretch my arms to her when morning comes and i gradually waken from deep dreams, in vain i look for her in my bed at night when some happy, innocent reverie has tricked me into believing i was sitting with her in a meadow, holding her hand and covering it with a thousand kisses. ah, still half asleep i reach for her, cheered to think she is there-and a flood of tears pours from my sorely beset heart, and i weep inconsolably over my somber future.
--goethe, the sorrows of young werther
Posted by ali at 11:07 PM | TrackBack
home
I have a need of silence and of stars.
Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed.
The silken road of whirled infinity
Is lost in voices shouting to be heard.
--william alexander percy
Posted by ali at 11:04 PM | TrackBack
the picture of life
to understand the picture one must divine the painter. nowadays, however, the whole guild of sciences is occupied in understanding the canvas and the pain but not the picture; one can say, indeed, that only he who has a clear view of the picture of life and existence as a whole can employ the individual sciences without harm to himself, for without such a regulatory total picture they are threads that nowhere come to an end and only render our life more confused and labyrinthine.
--nietzsche, untimely meditations
Posted by ali at 11:03 PM | TrackBack
August 2, 2007
the child of promise
my hearer, there was many a father who believed that with his son he lost everything that was dearest to him in the world, that he was deprived of every hope for the future, but yet there was none that was the child of promise in the sense that isaac was for abraham. there was many a father who lost his child; but then it was god, it was the unalterable, the unsearchable will of the almighty, it was his hand took the child. not so with abraham. for him was reserved a harder trial, and isaac’s fate was laid along with the knife in abraham’s hand. and there he stood, the old man, with his only hope! but he did not doubt, he did not look anxiously to the right or to the left, he did not challenge heaven with his prayers. he knew that it was god the almighty who was trying him, he knew that it was the hardest sacrifice that could be required of him; but he knew also that no sacrifice was too hard when god required it – and he drew the knife.
--kierkegaard, fear and trembling
Posted by ali at 12:06 AM | TrackBack
everyone shall be remembered
no, no one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. but each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. for he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved god became greater than all. everyone shall be remembered, but each became great in proportion to his expectation. one became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal, but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. everyone shall be remembered, but each was great in proportion to the greatness of that which he strove. for he who strove with the world became great by overcoming the world, and he who strove with himself became great by overcoming himself, but he who strove with god became greater than all. so there was strife in the world, man against man, one against a thousand, but he who strove with god was greater than all. so there was strife upon earth: there was one who overcame all by his power, and there was one who overcame god by his impotence. there was one who relied upon himself and gained all, there was one who secure in his strength sacrificed all, but he who believed god was greater than all. there was one who was great by reason of his power, one who was great by reason of his wisdom, and one who was great by reason of his hope, and one who was great by reason of his love; but abraham was greater than all, great by reason of his power whose strength is impotence, great by the reason of his wisdom whose secret is foolishness, great by the reason of his hope whose form is madness, great by the reason of the love which is hatred of oneself.
--kierkegaard, fear and trembling