“All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.”
― The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
― The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
“We can't expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone - the understanding has them, too.”
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“That it should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity gathered, arranged, and considered, which matters in the end, not some stamp of salvation or damnation that disperses all the complexity into some unsatisfying little decision - the balancing of scales...”
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“Often when I imagine you your wholeness cascades into many shapes. You run like a herd of luminous deer and I am dark, I am forest. You are a wheel at which I stand, whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up, revolve me nearer to the center.”
― A Year with Rilke
― A Year with Rilke
“All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names.”
― A Letter to a Hindu
― A Letter to a Hindu
Mark’s 2025 Year in Books
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