#nicolas berdyaev

[funeral]

Night is not less wonderful than the day . . . it is lit by the splendor of the stars and it reveals things to us that the day does not know. Night is closer than day to the mystery of all beginning. The abyss is open only by night: day spreads a veil over it.

Nicolas Berdyaev, "The Middle Ages"

[entheognosis]

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. Nicolas Berdyaev

[stoneagefairy]

I need more footnotes like that, for scientific purposes. 

[coffeebean-88]

2021.07.05 || 21/50 ||

I was browsing the shelves of the school library a few weeks ago and this title just hooked me. Even just reading the pages about his life and thought was fascinating! Now to try and actually understand his philosophy >.<

[thatwhichdoesnotsuffer]

The following is the answer we arrive at when we abandon a quantitative correlation between time and eternity: whoever enters the region of eternity without an ounce of love, enters it without an ounce of love, i.e. he enters eternal hell. For to live without love —this is hell. And to live without love in the region of eternity —this is to live in eternal hell. "Hell is the state of the soul powerless to come out of itself, absolute self-centredness, dark and evil isolation, i.e. final inability to love."(Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, London, 1937, p. 351) This subjective state of soul is neither long nor short —it is as intense as eternity is. Similarly, the blessedness that a saint experiences in the vision of God is as intense as eternity —although it could not so last, since someone present at the ecstasy of a saint would time it as a few minutes. The "region" of eternity is that of intensity, which surpasses the measures of quantity that we employ in time and space. "Eternity" is not a duration of infinite length; it is the "intensity of quality" which, if compared with time and thus translated into the language of quantity, is comparable with an infinite duration.

Meditations on the Tarot

[wrathofgnon]

“We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.” — Nicolas Berdyaev

[funeral]

Nicolas Berdyaev, Dostoevsky

[wrathofgnon]

“Modern civilized man cannot endure cruelty, pain and suffering and is more merciful than men of the past, but this is not because he is morally and spiritually higher than they. He fears pain and suffering more than they did; he is more effeminate, less firm, patient and courageous than they; in other words he is spiritually less strong.” — Nicolas Berdyaev