Sydney > Sydney's Quotes

“the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Despite all their differences, the Greek temple and the cathedral are both towering. A Buddhist temple never appears to tower, as a Greek temple does. The spatial characteristics of the Buddhist temple are not those of standing or steadfastness, the fundamental traits of essences. Buddhist temples in the Far East are also often to be found in forest clearings, surrounded and protected by mountainsides. And they lie aside, whereas cathedrals and Greek temples mark and occupy the centre. In this sense, too, Buddhist temples are absent.”
― Byung-Chul Han, Ausencia. Acerca de la cultura y la filosofía del Lejano Oriente

“In the Fourth Field of Knowledge there is only observation of movement and other kinds of material change; meaning or purpose, intelligence or chance, freedom or necessity, as well as life, consciousness, and self-awareness cannot be sensually observed. Only 'signs' can be found and observed; the observer has to choose the grade of significance he is willing to attribute to them.”
― E.F. Schumacher, A guide for the puzzled

“There is today a great deal of talk about the attainment of 'higher states of consciousness.' Unfortunately, this aspiration, in most cases, does not grow out of a deep respect for the great wisdom traditions of mankind, the world religions, but is based on such fantastic notions as an 'Aquarian Frontier' or the 'Evolution of Consciousness,' and is generally associated with a total inability to distinguish between the spiritual and the occult. It seems that the real aim of these movements is to obtain new thrills, to master magic and miracles, thereby enlivening existential boredom. The advice of all people knowledgeable in these matter [sic] is not to seek occult experiences and not to pay any attention to them when they occur -- and they will almost inevitably occur when any intensive inner work is undertaken.”
― E.F. Schumacher, A guide for the puzzled

“Thinking is the result of 'a lucid courage for essential anxiety.' The beginning of thinking is not trust in the world but anxiety. Thus, thinking bravely exposes itself to the 'silent voice that attunes us to the horror of the abyss.”
― Byung-Chul Han, Ausencia. Acerca de la cultura y la filosofía del Lejano Oriente

“The authors might have made the very interesting point that in fact Native American writing is not postcolonial but rather colonial, that the colonizers never left but simply changed their names to Americans; but the editors do not make such a point. The basic problem seems to be that the center, even when it begins to define itself as something ambiguously called "multicultural," still does not always hear more than the echo of its own voice or see very far beyond its own reflection.”
― Louis Owens, Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place

“To Helen

I saw thee once-once only-years ago;
I must not say how many-but not many.
It was a july midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe-
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light
Thier odorous souls in an ecstatic death-
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, by the poetry of thy prescence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses
And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate that, on this july midnight-
Was it not Fate (whose name is also sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh Heaven- oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two worlds!)
Save only thee and me. I paused- I looked-
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)

The pearly lustre of the moon went out;
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All- all expired save thee- save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes-
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them- they were the world to me.
I saw but them- saw only them for hours-
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition!yet how deep-
How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go- they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.

They follow me- they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers- yet I thier slave
Thier office is to illumine and enkindle-
My duty, to be saved by thier bright light,
And purified in thier electric fire,
And sanctified in thier Elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in heaven- the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still- two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“The village was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Through the Magic Door

“Ignoring somebody’s mistakes in life from a powerful position makes you a saint, but the same act (whose intention
does not matter), if carried out from a weak position, will make you a coward or helpless.”
― Ravindra Shukla

“Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?” he said. “It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“The Indian is valuable as a bit of color, as an invaluable link to the stolen landscape of America, as an index to the Euramerican's lost "mystical" self.”
― Louis Owens, Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place