Citadelle

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Octavian Actually it's a pretty tricky question, because the English edition is incomplete. How many chapters does your edition have and at what chapter this q…moreActually it's a pretty tricky question, because the English edition is incomplete. How many chapters does your edition have and at what chapter this quote is located in yours?(less)
Zhi Chen "Never is there anything but the Here-and-Now to set in order. What is the good of fretting against this heritage? As for the Future, your task is not…more"Never is there anything but the Here-and-Now to set in order. What is the good of fretting against this heritage? As for the Future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it. And surely you have enough work to your hand when you are given the Present as your raw material. I, too, when I contemplate this assemblage of mountains and dwelling places, barley-fields and herds of sheep and goats, existing at this present moment, and I name it an empire, I make of it something that was not there before, something which I might call a single, simple entity; for anyone who touched it with the scalpel of the intellect would destroy it, before even he had known it for what it is. Thus I stablish the Present, even as the effort of my limbs when I climb the mountain crest marshals the landscape and reveals in its oneness that soft blue expanse in which, like eggs in a wild bird's nest, the towns repose-which similitude is neither truer nor falser than likening these towns under my eyes to ships or temples; but only different. And thus, it lies in my power to make of man's estate a nourishment for my serenity."

(Page 155, The Wisdom of the Sands (Citadelle), Phoenix Book edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1979)(less)

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