The peculiar affectation of philosophers
that existence is a mystery.

The strange conceit of poets
that inspiration is an authority.

My perverse obsession
                                        with their likeness.

Do you want their praise?

People are mostly decent.
That's how institutions work.
We're honest about most things—
how we deal with intuitions.

Education is not a preparation for life.
It is a precision in our suffering.

The crime that you confess is not the actual crime.
The sins you are forgiven are not what you have done.

Incipit Vita Nova

She was "the blessed one," though few understood the meaning of her name. Blessed, too, was he to experience this woman, if only twice, some nine years apart, in his "old life," but perfectly.

God bless the troubadour, free spirit of romance, who teaches us to appreciate an inaccessible beauty, to value pleasures from which we are barred, by circumstance or disposition, and accept a deeper longing for the other, a firmer hold upon our ourselves, not merely as recompense for our suffering, but as the very revelation of our capacity to love.

Solace

I've been wrong about everything so far.
I may well be wrong about the rest.

Socratic Meditations

Rightness in the way of desire:
knowing what is good for you.
Rightness in the way of a belief:
mastering what is truly before you.

Know yourself and do what you will.
"Master thyself then others shall ye bear." (E.P.)

Knowledge is the learning that lasts.
Power is a freedom that grows.

See also: "Discipline and Freedom"

Children naturally resent being treated like children.
Why do adults demand it?

We're ever ready to accuse our politicians of corruption,
but reticent to suggest that our scientists are confused.

I once made a map
of all the bridges
I have burned. Then
I burned the map.

---

Alt. take:

Let us make a map
of the all the bridges
we have burned. Then
let us burn the map.

---

Alt. take:

I once made a map
of all the bridges
I have burned. Today
I burned the map.

The way that can be followed isn't actually the way.

The name you can call it by isn't actually its name.

I now know what Mallarmé meant

by, "The world exists to end up in a book,"

and, "Destruction was my Beatrice."

He meant the same damned thing.

The Myth of the Chinese Written Character

We wanted to believe in a silent writing. We wanted to believe in a reading that evoked no sounds, only images, so that the text could never be simply read out loud. To recite any text you would first have to form its ideas in your mind. Only then would you choose the words of the spoken language to represent the thought, just as one might recount a memory, or describe a passing scene. The signs on the page could not determine the sounds in the air. Between the poem and the performance there would always be a picture. There would be no reading without imagination.

The function of art is not to get you thinking but to end your thoughtlessness. It is not to make you feel something but to assuage your callousness.

Institutions are the way we do things, immediately, without thinking.

Intuitions are the way we see things, immediately, without feeling.

Experience is what makes us think and feel, i.e., imagine.

Imagination is the means by which our intuitions and our institutions change.

Literature doesn't change you. It helps you live with who you have become.

Explication de Texte

No philosopher is as wise as their art implies, nor poet, as loving.