quotes

but you have to choose: to live or to recount — from Sartre's Nausea



thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man — from Bertrand Russell's Why Men Fight



We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. — Anaïs Nin



emerged from the tentative ways, the obscurities and dazzle of youth, we look straight in front of us, ready for what may come (the door opens, the door keeps opening) — from Virginia Woolf's The Waves



discovery commences from the awareness of anomaly — from Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions



Since there is no complete axiomatization of a culture, there is no complete axiomatic formulation of its philosophy .... historicity and cultural experience provide the context for the emergence of methodology and cosmology, which in their turn provide the context for the emergence of the language and construction of a philosophy - from Chung-ying Cheng's The Origins of Chinese Philosophy



Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. — from Steinbeck's East of Eden



you are the universe in ecstatic motion — from Rumi



“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." — from philosopher Alfred North Whitehead



I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful — from Nietzsche's The Gay Science