
„If I say, "I am a monk." or "I am a Buddhist," these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. To be human is basic.“
— Далай-лама XIV spiritual leader of Tibet 1935
"Kindness and Compassion" p. 47.
— Далай-лама XIV spiritual leader of Tibet 1935
"Kindness and Compassion" p. 47.
— Julia Cameron American writer 1948
Context: When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.
— D.H. Lawrence English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter 1885 - 1930
Context: What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
Apocalypse (1930)
— Michael Hamburger British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic 1924 - 2007
— Charles Dickens English writer and social critic and a Journalist 1812 - 1870
Master Humphrey's Clock, (1840) Vol. 1
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772 - 1834
Context: I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word, an arguer, would not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying any thing merely as a fact — merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energic — I don't mean energetic; I require in every thing what, for lack of another word, I may call propriety, — that is, a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at another time.
1 March 1834.
— Caspar David Friedrich Swedish painter 1774 - 1840
Quote of Friedrich, 1821; as cited in Authenticity and Fiction in the Russian Literary Journey, 1790-1840 (2000) by Andreas Schönle, p. 108, from memoirs of Vasily Zhukovsky
Variant translation: I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature.
This answer of Friedrich is recorded by Vasily Zhukovsky who asked the painter in 1821 to travel together to Switzerland
— Satoru Iwata Japanese video game programmer and businessman 1959 - 2015
2005 GDC Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HUMt2rrOI
— Louis Riel Canadian politician 1844 - 1885
Context: I am contradicted at this moment on politics, and the smile that comes to my face is not an act of my will, so much it comes naturally, from the satisfaction that I prove that I experience seeing one of my difficulties disappearing. Should I be executed, at least if I were going to be executed, I would not be executed as an insane man, it would be a great consolation for my mother, for my wife, for my children, for my brothers, for my relatives, even for my protectors, for my countrymen. I thank the gentlemen who were composing the Jury for having recommended me to the clemency of the Court. When I express the great hope that I have just expressed to you, I don't express it without ground, my hopes are reasonable, and since they are recommended, since the recommendation of the Jury to the Crown is for clemency.
— Antonin Artaud French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director 1896 - 1948
Si je me tue ce ne sera pas pour me détruire, mais pour me reconstituer, le suicide ne sera pour moi qu’un moyen de me reconquérir violemment, de faire brutalement irruption dans mon être, de devancer l’avance incertaine de Dieu. Par le suicide, je réintroduis mon dessin dans la nature, je donne pour la première fois aux choses la forme de ma volonté.
“On Suicide,” no. 1, Le Disque Vert (1925).
— John Fante 1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent 1909 - 1983
Chapter Six
— Ingeborg Bachmann Austrian poet and author 1926 - 1973
— Moses Hess German philosopher 1812 - 1875
Hess' Diary p. 40