Tarvo Varres > Tarvo's Quotes

“Depersonalization as the great objectification of oneself. The greatest exteriorization one can reach. Whoever gets to oneself through depersonalization shall recognize the other in any disguise: the first step in relation to the other is finding inside oneself the man of all men. Every woman is the woman of all women, every man is the man of all men, and each of them could appear wherever man is judged. But only in immanence, because only a few reach the point of, in us, recognizing themselves. And then, by the simple presence of their existence, revealing ours.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“Nothing calmer than that, a visible circle of calm-and yet, something that immediately made me see something else, not so calm, a calm not soothed, shivering, as though it hadn’t reached the point from which there is no longer any return, as though it wasn’t free, yet, from all faces, still desired one, feared being separated from it: sometimes giving me the feeling of wandering desperately around the face, sometimes the hope of drawing near it, the certainty of recapturing it, of having recaptured it, an unforgettable impression of its unity with the face, even though the face itself remains invisible, a marvelous unity, sensed as a happiness, a piece of luck that dispersed shadows, that went beyond the day, something for which one was prepared to sacrifice everything, a thrilling resemblance, the thrill of the unique, a force of a desire that again and again and again recaptures what it once held-but what is happening? resemblance does not cease to be present behind everything, it even imposes itself, becomes more majestic, I divine it as I have never seen it, it is the moving reflection of all space, and the smile also affirms its immensity, affirms the majesty of this resemblance which is almost too vast, the smile seems to lose itself in the resemblance and through the smile the resemblance seems to become a resemblance that strays, without resemblance.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me

“We can never put enough distance between ourselves and what we love. To think that God is, is still to think of him as present; this is a thought according to our measure, destined only to console us. It is much more fitting to think that God is not, just as we must love him purely enough that we could be indifferent to the fact that he should not be. It is for this reason that the atheist is closer to God than the believer.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.”
― Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer

“Something in the question necessarily exceeds the power of questioning; but this does not mean that there are too many secrets in the world that provoke questions: it is rather the contrary. When being is finally without question, when the whole becomes socially or institutionally realized, at that time and in an unbearable manner, the excess of questioning with respect to the power of questioning will make itself felt for the bearer of the question: the question will be felt as the impossibility of questioning. In the profound question, impossibility questions.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“But this metaphysics, like this science, has enfolded its deeper life in a rich tissue of symbols, forgetting something that, while science needs symbols for its analytical development, the main object of metaphysics is to do away with symbols.”
― Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics

“I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”
― Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing

“Among human beings, only the existence of those we love is fully recognized. Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“If one were to entrust the organisation of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device.”
― Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“I think about you. But I don't say it anymore.”
― Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour

“I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.”
― Gertrude Stein

“The anonymous puts the name in place, leaves it empty, as if the name were there only to let itself be passed through because the name does not name, but is the non-unity and non-presence of the nameless.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.”
― Clarice Lispector

“We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism.”
― James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing – How Sight Alters the Seen and Transforms the Seer

“The infinite is in the finite of every instant.”
― Zen proverb

“In each word, not words but the space that, appearing, disappearing, they designate as the moving space of their appearance and their disappearance.
In each word, a response to the unexpressed, the refusal and attraction of the unexpressed.”
― Maurice Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion

“One thing must be understood : I have said nothing extraordinary or even surprising. What is extraordinary begins at the moment I stop. But I am no longer able to speak of it.”
― Maurice Blanchot

“He would never know what he knew. That was loneliness.”
― Maurice Blanchot

“What if what has been said one time not only does not cease to be said but always recommences, and not only recommences but also imposes upon us the idea that nothing has ever truly begun, having from the beginning begun by beginning again.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“We can never put enough distance between ourselves and what we love. To think that God is, is still to think of him as present; this is a thought according to our measure, destined only to console us. It is much more fitting to think that God is not, just as we must love him purely enough that we could be indifferent to the fact that he should not be. It is for this reason that the atheist is closer to God than the believer.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“Even death is a power, a capacity. It is not a simple event that will happen to me, an objective and observable fact; here my power to be will cease, here I will no longer be able to be here. But death, insofar as it belongs to me and belongs to me alone, since no one can die my death in my stead or in my place, makes of this non-possibility, this impending future of mine, this relation to myself always open until my end, yet another power. Dying, I can still die, this is our sign as man.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
― Simone Weil