Bashayer Noury (Bash) > Recent Status Updates

Hell: *exists*

No one:

Absolutely no one:

Dante: SELECT *

“Philosophy, and more than once, points out to one who reads with understanding how Nature takes her course from the Divine Intellect, from its artistic workmanship; and if you have your Physics well in mind you will find, not many pages from the start, how your art too, as best it can, imitates Nature, the way an apprentice does his master ... From Art and Nature man was meant to take his daily bread to live.”

I was planning to dive into Divine Comedy for a while but I always felt hesitant; I feel that I need more time to get a better understanding. Then yesterday I found some videos that made me want to dive into Dante, and now I think I found a way to make my understanding better.

Starting with Inferno & so far the beginning is pretty great... someone tell me why the hell I am that excited about a book about hell lol

“O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that — being mere darkness — I'll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future.”

“I prefer a defeat that knows the beauty of flowers to a victory in the desert, full of blindness in the soul, alone with its isolated nothingness.”

~

“To have opinions is to sell out to yourself. To have no opinion is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”

“The experience of life teaches nothing, just as history teaches nothing. True experience comes from restricting our contract with reality while increasing our analysis of that contact. In this way our sensibility becomes broader and deeper, because everything is in us — all we need to do is look for it and know how to look.

...

because if the freedom isn't in me, then I won't have it no matter where I go.”

“The cause of my profound sense of incompatibility with others is, I believe, that most people think with their feelings, whereas I feel with my thoughts.

For the ordinary man, to feel is to live, and to think is to know how to live. For me, to think is to live, and to feel is merely food for thought.”

“I don’t know who my soul is,
Nor does it know who I am.

Understand it? It would take time.
Explain it? Don’t know if I can.

And in this misunderstanding
Between who I am and what is I
There’s a whole other meaning
Lying between earth and sky.

In that gap is born the universe
With suns and stars past counting.
It has a profound meaning,
Which I know. It’s outside me.”

“For when the mind intently studies
In itself the world’s reflections,
It becomes their plasma, and the world is what
Creates art, not the mind. Thus
On the plaque the outer moment engraves
Its being, and there endures.”

“I have no philosophy, I have senses . . .
If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is
But because I love it, and for that very reason,
Because those who love never know what they love
Or why they love, or what love is.

To love is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not to think . . .”

“Could it think, the heart would stop beating.”

“Would you that spangle of Existence spend

About THE SECRET-quick about it, Friend!

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True-

And upon what, prithee, may life depend?”

“There is no feeling of lightness, like the one that comes after conquering a long-held fear.”

“There’s no wisdom without love. No love without freedom. And no freedom unless we dare to walk away from what we have become.”

“Nothing swells the ego quite like a cause motivated by the delusion of pure selflessness.”

~

“How could they be so certain of the superiority of their truths when they knew so little, if anything at all, about other cultures, other philosophies, other ways of thinking?
...
How could they call themselves enlightened when they knew so little, if anything at all, about their own culture, their own faith?”

“Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”

“No life is a waste ... The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”

“This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.”

“Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not “if only.” Not “as long as.” I matter equally. Full stop.”

~

“People will selectively use “tradition” to justify anything ... Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want.”

“As long as I knew myself, I would be all right. Whosoever knows himself, knows the One.”

“When one speaks ill of God, he speaks ill of himself .. How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.”

~

“It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.”

“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd.”

“Every one of us has to find out for himself what is allowed and what is forbidden—forbidden to him. It is entirely possible to never do anything forbidden and still be an absolute scoundrel.

Anyone too comfortable to think for himself and be his own judge simply obeys the laws as they are. He has it easy.”

~

“Fate and character are different names for the same idea.”

Wait, what? My next read is another Hesse? Well that is not expected at all!

Hesse is one of the writers that make me wish I can read his work in its original language.

Pretty excited for this one.