Zena Hitz > Quotes

“That is not an observation, that is an idea!”33 But Goethe himself thought that much of reality lurked past the surfaces immediately visible to the eye. As he put it: When we try to recognize the idea inherent in a phenomenon we are confused by the fact that it frequently—even normally—contradicts our senses. The Copernican system is based on an idea that was hard to grasp; even now it contradicts our senses every day. We merely echo something we neither see nor understand. The metamorphosis of plants contradicts our senses this way.34 If the earth’s movement around the sun is so invisible to us (we still say, as Goethe points out, that the sun rises and sets), we ought to expect reality in many cases to be invisible, available only to those cognitive powers that go past sensory perception.”
― Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

“One of the diseases of our spectacle-riddled culture is that we forget that the invisible life has all the human splendor of the visible one, and often more. I have had in mind all along, and have appealed to where possible, the humble bookworm, the amateur naturalist, the contemplative taxi driver. If you, like me, are naturally drawn to achievement, collect examples of ordinary thinkers—human beings whose splendor is known only to a few, their family, their neighbors, their coworkers. Settle back in awe from time to time, as I do, in thinking about the vast treasury of thought and experience that will never be available to us.”
― Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

“in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient liberation of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—the more athletic trim, in short, the fighting shape. —WILLIAM JAMES, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE”
― Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life