There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samara and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samara.
—
W.S. Maughm
God
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
—
Charles Bukowski
Cities
Some cities are really successful, and present the solid and definite achievement of the thing at which their builders aimed; and when they do so, they present, just as a fine statue presents, something of the direct divinity of man, something immeasurably superior to mere nature, to mere common mountains, to mere vulgar seas.... The modern city is ugly, not because it is a city, but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfishness and materialistic energies. In short, the modern town is offensive because it is a great deal too like nature, a great deal too like the country.
—
GK Chesterton
Good & Evil
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring, real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. 'Imaginative literature' then, is either boring or immoral or a mixture of both.
—
Simone Weil
Last Words
In these days when it has become the medical convention, firstly, to keep the dying in ignorance of their condition and, secondly, to keep them under sedation, how are any of us to utter what could be legitimately called our 'last' words? Still, it is fun to imagine what one would like them to be. The best proposed comment I know of is that of my friend Chester Kallman: 'I've never done this before'.
—
W.H. Auden
Falling in Love
"Idle to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point— for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.... Every man is made of clay and daimon, and no woman can nourish both." - Justine
—
from The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell
God & the Dying
"For years one has to put up with the feeling that people do not care, really care, about one; then one day with growing alarm, one realizes that it is God who does not care: and not merely that he does not care, but that he does not care one way or the other." - Pursewarden
