Notes From The Parade @tylerlyle - Tumblr Blog

The forbidden zone, Ed Mell

Animals are much more content with mere existence than we are; the plants are wholly so; and man is so according to how dull and insensitive he is. The animal’s life consequently contains less suffering but also less pleasure than the human’s, the direct reason being that on the one hand it is free from care and anxiety and the torments that attend them, but on the other is without hope and therefore has no share in that anticipation of a happy future which, together with the enchanting products of the imagination which accompany it, is the source of most of our greatest joys and pleasures.

Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”, Parerga and Paralipomena (via philosophybits)

inneroptics

Schädel/Skull-1983 Gerhard Richter

From a series of eight skull paintings created in 1983. The work speaks to the artist’s own reflections on mortality in the wake of his 50th birthday.

c-inefilia

“Isolation is not solitude. In solitude, we are never alone with ourselves. In solitude we are always two in one, and we become one, a complete individual with richness and the limits of its exact features, only in relation to the others and in their company. The big metaphysical questions, the search for God, liberty and immortality, relations between man and the world, being and nothingness or again between life and death, are always posed in solitude, when man is alone with himself, therefore, in the virtual company of all. The fact of being, even for a moment, diverted from one’s own individuality allows it to formulate mankind’s eternal questions, which go beyond the questions posed in different ways by each individual.”

Godard quoting Hannah Arendt in Nous sommes tous encore ici (Anne-Marie Miéville, 1997)

philosophybits

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series (via philosophybits)

philosophybits

It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn (via philosophybits)

philosophybits

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation, and the first step towards co-operation lies in the hearts of individuals.”

— Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics

philosophybits

It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle” (via philosophybits)

wordsforyoungmen

philosophybits

Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave towards someone?

Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (via philosophybits)

philosophybits

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (via philosophybits)

philosophybits

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (via philosophybits)