Softly

[modernshxmxn]

Now you can live long!

[softlefloftle-blog]

Do not stop drinking and gobbling up food—and your body will never be light.

Do not stop fretting and worrying—and your spirit will never be pure.

Do not stop craving for sounds and sights—and your heart will never be calm.

  No calm in your heart—and your spirit will never be numinous.

No numen in your spirit—and the Tao cannot work its wonders.

Success is not in homage to the stars or worship of the Dipper.

That rather makes you suffer and exhausts your body.

Success is in deepening the spirit powers of your heart.

There is no effort needed—the Tao of immortality is there!

Now you can live long!

[a-r-t-history]

[aseaofquotes]

[parasutler-blog-blog]

what I defend above all is the possibility and the necessity of the critical intellectual, who is firstly critical of the intellectual doxa secreted by the doxosophers. there is no genuine democracy without genuine opposing critical powers. the intellectual is one of those, of the first magnitude. that is why I think that the work of demolishing the critical intellectual, living or dead - marx, nietzsche, sartre, foucault, and some others who are grouped together under the label pansee 68- is as dangerous as the demolition of the public interest and that it is part of the same process of restoration. of course I would prefer it if intellectuals had all, and always, lived up to the immense historical responsibility they bear and if they had always invested in their actions not only their moral authority but also their intellectual competence- like, to cite just one example, pierre vidal-naquet, who has engaged all his mastery of historical method in a critique of the abuses of history. having said that, in the words of karl kraus, ‘between two evils, I refuse to choose the lesser.’ whole I have little indulgence for ‘irresponsible’ intellectuals, I have even less respect for the ‘intellectuals’ of the political-administrative establishment, polymorphous polygraphs who polish their annual essays between two meetings of boards of directors, three publishers’ parties and miscellaneous television appearances

bourdieu, acts of resistance (via doxasavar)

[sirilaf]

All things considered, what we look for in other people is perhaps the same gentle deterritorialization we look for in travel. The temptation of exile in the desire of another and of journey across that desire come to be substituted for one’s own desire and for discovery. Often looks and amorous gestures already have the distance of exile, language expatriates itself into words which are afraid to mean, the body is like a hologram, gentle on the eye and soft to the touch, and can thus easily be striated in all directions by desire like an aerial space. We move circumspectly within our emotions, passing from one to another, on a mental planet made up of convolutions. And we bring back the same transparent memories from our excesses and passions as we do from our travels.

Jean Baudrillard 

[shinji--moon-deactivated2017123]

[scicchitano]

At bottom there is no greater pleasure than that of analysing one’s own pain, no more sensual pleasure than the liquid, sickly meanderings of feelings as they crumble and rot: light steps in the uncertain shadows, so gentle on the ear we do not even turn to find out whose they are; vague, distant songs, whose words we do not try to catch but are lulled all the more by not knowing what they say or whence they come; the tenuous secrets of pale waters, filling the night with fragile distances; and, inaudible from here, somnolent in the warm torpor of the afternoon where summer slides into autumn, the rattle of far-off carts, returning from where and carrying what joys inside them? The flowers in the garden died and, withered, become different flowers, older, nobler, more in keeping in their dead yellows with mystery, silence and abandon. The watersnakes that surface in the pools have their reasons for their dreams. Is that the distant croaking of frogs? Ah the dead fields of my self! The rustic peace known only in dreams! My futile life like that of a vagabond who does not work but sleeps by the roadside with the smell of the fields seeping like mist into his soul, lulled by a cool, translucent sound, deep and rich with the understanding the nothing connects with nothing, a nocturnal, unknown, weary nomad beneath the cold compassion of the stars. I follow the path of my dreams, making of the images steps up to other images; opening out like a fan the chance metaphors to be found in the great paintings of my inner visions; I divest myself of life and lay it to one side like a suit that’s grown too tight. I hide amongst trees far from the roads. I lose myself. For light fleeting moments I manage to forget the taste of life, to leave […] life and noise behind and die, feelings first, consciously, absurdly, like an empire of anguished ruins, a grand entrance amidst flags and victorious drums into a vast final city where I will weep for nothing, want nothing and not even ask to be myself.

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

The greatest book I’ve ever been given. 

(via scicchitano)

[aseaofquotes]

[softlefloftle-blog]

Anne Sexton, “Admonitions to a Special Person”

[schoolofdesire]

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les Jours

[softlefloftle-blog]

An hour and a half before midnight Fayez was born. When the nurse called congratulations I felt him, Fayez, falling upon my shoulders, and a for a few moments I was seized by a feeling akin to dizziness. Amid the clamour of sensations that were taking hold of me, I felt I was more closely linked to the land upon which I walk. It was as if his fall upon my shoulders had planted me deep in the earth.

In the morning, the nurse brought him and showed him to me from behind the glass. He seemed a stupid red piece of flesh; closed-eyed, open-mouthed, and trembling palms: eyes that have much to see, a mouth that must chew for a long time, and two palms-are they for giving or receiving, or both?

The doctor who was standing beside me said: - How do you feel? - I feel nothing…… - Nothing at all? - Nothing……

It was as if I was saying to myself; there is time for millions of feelings, time for anger, joy, surprise, disappointment, happiness, misery, laughter, sadness, love, hate, waiting and boredom - millions of moments abundantly full of all the contradictions found on this earth.

In the other room is his mother lying on the bed. She has forgotten all the pains she had to bear for his birth; she has forgotten all the tears she shed during the last twenty hours; she has forgotten everything…It is as if this new love, which filled her suddenly when they told her she had given birth, this overflowing love that no human being can have for another except the mother for her child - it is as if this love has washed everything away with a mythical hand.

Between them - he in the hands of the nurse behind the glass pane, and she in her bed unable to walk to see him with me - I was standing, washed in love and fear, limpid as a piece of glass. There is nothing occupying my thoughts or interests; there is just a man, like millions of other men who do not know the reality of the future - just a small incapable man who stands confronting the unknown which surrounds him.

When the nurse put him back to sleep I began walking back to my wife’s room, but as soon as I heard the sound of my steps I returned to my own world; a world encircled with something called real love, a love without commitment or punishment, a love for its own sake, without compensation, without an alternative, price or fear, serene love that I have never felt before - never; a love for that child that was born from me, because of me and for me. Its cost was my love for her, and her love for me.

While leaving your mother’s room I also knew the meaning of worry - the load that lies heavy on the shoulders of men because it springs from within, from deep within and which gives live that noble motive which a man who does not know the meaning of an inner burden lacks…

Ghassan Kanafani, cited from his personal diary

[lazyyogi]

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

[wordsthat-speak]

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

Isaac Asimov

Asimov’s gift (well, one of them) was always taking complex concepts, mainly scientific ones, and making them simple to understand.  Here he hits a bulls eye with happiness.

(via solbus)

[kerryquotesquotes]

Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors. First come those who write without thinking. They write from a full memory, from reminiscences; it may be, even straight out of other people’s book. This class is the most numerous. Then come those who do their thinking whilst they are writing. They think in order to write; and there is no lack of them. Last of all come those authors who think before they begin to write. They are rare.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature 

for speaking for living it is the same: to pause before you speak before you act, it is rare, it is worthy and beautiful

[earthenempress]

Attract what you expect, Reflect what you desire, Become what you respect, Mirror what you admire.

Unknown (via nicolasriphole)

[mereconjecture]

THIS TIME, BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER. REMEMBER: EACH OF YOU WANTS TO BE HAPPY. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU WANTS TO LIVE FREE FROM FEAR. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU ARE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. BUT YOU ARE, TRUST ME, YOU ARE.

from The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders (via mereconjecture)

[gonegong]

They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back,and that feeling, that feelingof being accepted back again and again, of someone’saffection for you expandingto encompass whatevernew flawed thing had just mani-fested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—

He knew her so well 

“Tenth of December” 

[choosehopefortheanimals]