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January 26, 2006

true philosophers and politics

Moralists and philosophers (I mean true philosophers like Marcus Aurelius and Jesus Christ) never talked politics, they considered their subject only from the human standpoint. Equal rights and other such vain imaginings were not their concern; all they enjoined upon mankind was resignation to fate, not to the unknown fatum of the ancient world, but to the constant need to submit to the harsh decrees of nature-a need which no one can deny and no philanthropist can overcome. They asked nothing more of the sage than that he conform to the laws of nature and play his part in his appointed place amidst a general harmony. Illness, death, poverty, spiritual suffering, these are with us always and will torment us under any form of government; democracy or monarchy, it makes no odds.

Eugene Delacroix - The Journals

Posted by amin at 7:35 PM

January 25, 2006

i believe so that i may understand

I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that You have created Your image in me, so that I may remember You, think of You, love You. But this image is so effaced and worn away by vice, so darkened by the smoke of sin, that it can not do what it was made to do unless You renew it and reform it. I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that "unless I believe, I shall not understand.

Saint Anselm

Posted by amin at 7:43 PM

January 23, 2006

isolation

When your lips seek my lips they bring
That sorrowful and outcast thing
my heart home from wandering.

Then ere your lips have loosed their hold,
I feel my heart's heat growing cold,
And my heart shivers and grows old.

When your lips leave my lips, again
I feel the old doubt and the old pain
Tighten about me like a chain.

After the pain, after the doubt,
A lonely darkness winds about
My soul like death, and shuts you out.

Arthur Symons

Posted by amin at 6:57 PM

January 18, 2006

redon on solitude

The artist knows perfectly that among all of his works the one which reflects and reveals him the most was done in solitude. All genesis retains a little shadow and mystery. It is in solitude that the artist feels himself intensely alive, in secret depth, and nothing of the outside world solicits him nor obliges him to disguise himself. It is there that he feels, discovers that he sees, finds, desires, loves, and saturates himself with the natural, at the primary sources of instinct, it is there, more than in any other social place, that he is given the power to become exalted with purity and to illuminate by his spirit the raw material he opens and spreads.

Odilon Redon

Posted by amin at 5:08 PM

January 15, 2006

one song

there are all these religions,
so everyone can sing along,
and all these people singing,
together make just one song.

Rumi

Posted by amin at 5:21 PM

January 8, 2006

tired of living, curious about dying

I am often tired of living. I am also curious about dying. When my time comes, I wish to die fully conscious of every bit of life departing from me-fully conscious of what is approaching. Death in sleep or in a coma, no not this. I wish to die fully aware. Petrarch once said, “to those who enter, years seem infinite, to those who depart, nothing.” I don’t think I will live to a “ripe old age”. I think I belong to the children “kissed by death”-as Maeterlick would have it.

Josef Herman

Posted by amin at 5:48 PM

January 2, 2006

women and men

Women are the symbol of Beauty and Goodness. Men are the symbol of Truth and Right.

Novalis - Pollen and Fragments

Posted by amin at 2:21 PM