Art and Existence

An entertainment is something which distracts us or diverts us from the routine of daily life. It makes us for the time being forget our cares and worries; it interrupts our conscious thoughts and habits, rests our nerves and minds, though it may incidentally exhaust our bodies. Art, on the other hand, though it may divert us from the normal routine of our existence, causes us in some way or other to become conscious of that existence. - Sir Herbert Read, British critic and poet in To Hell with Culture, ch. 13 (1963).

---

The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal. - George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher and poet in Reason in Art, ch. 8, The Life of Reason (1905-1906, rev. edition 1953)

Possibilities

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoicating as possibility?

        - Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Danish philosopher wrote in his book Either/Or:

Open your eyes

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are --Anon

Henry Ford

"You can't build up a reputation on what you are going to do." - Henry Ford

  

T. E. Lawrence

  “All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out otheir dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” - T. E. Lawrence

Sigmund Freud

 It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression. - Sigmund Freud

Albert Camus

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." -- Albert Camus

Three more quotes from Camus:

"Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it."

"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth"

"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."

T. S. Eliot

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” - T. S. Eliot

Blaise Pascal

Pascal said a lot of amazing things... but here are a few illustrative quotes.    

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.      


Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.     


Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.     


Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.      


A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.   

Jack Kerouac

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” -- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Other Kerouac quotes that I like:

“Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars.”

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

“Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.”

Anais Nin

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. - Anais Nin.

Nin certainly led a full life, as outlined by her in her diaries - Vol 1 through Vol 7 - and a recent biography.

Randy Pausch

"Time is all you have, and you might have less than you think!”

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."

Those two quotes are by Randy Pausch, the "dying man who taught America how to live". He died on July 25, 2008.

 

Enjoy his "Last Lecture" and more of his musings from the last few years of his life at his blog.

Viktor Frankl

"We needed to stop asking ourselves about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. . . . Therefore, it was necessary for us to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer." - Viktor Frankl

Maupassant

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare. — Guy de Maupassant

F. Scott Fitzgerald

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - The final sentence of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Gertrude Stein

"A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears". - Gertrude Stein

Imagination

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” - Albert Einstein

Goethe

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Decisions

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” - Anon

Lewis Carroll

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
                 - Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

New beginnings

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -Anon

Waiting for the right moment

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it"- W M Lewis

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.” - Ralph Waldom Emerson

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you." - Aldous Huxley

T. S. Eliot

                                               

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden   ...
      

From one of my favorite poems, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. The above lines are the amazing first lines of the "first quartet" Burnt Norton. You can read the entire poem -- and remember to read it aloud - at http://bit.ly/FourQuartets

Buddha

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting. - Buddha (cited in)

Chogyam Trungpa

There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are. - Chogyam Trungpa