Showing posts with label nothingness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nothingness. Show all posts

Saturday, January 22, 2022

[From] a line from Roberto BolaƱo’s novel Distant Star: “…as if time were not a river but an earthquake happening nearby.” It’s an arresting thought: What if time’s ravages compelled our attention with the same ineluctable force as an earthquake? What if time were experienced not as a flow but as a phenomenon whose energy overcomes you, terrifies you, forces you to reach out in search of balance?

Jonathan Mingle, The Unimaginable Touch of Time  (NYRB, February 10, 2022)

Friday, June 12, 2020

The more perfectly, and even alertly, we clicked through our automatic affairs on the surface of things, the more complete was our insensibility to the utterly inscrutable mystery that anything should be in existence at all.

Alfred Noyes, The Unknown God

Friday, February 28, 2020

He who knows not what the Universe is knows not what is his place therein. He who knows not for what end it was created, knows not himself and knows not the world. He who is deficient in either of these parts of knowledge cannot even say for what end he himself was created.

 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (VIII,52)

Thursday, October 10, 2019

To be is possible and not-to-be is impossible.... Thought and being are the same.

Parmenides, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

He strikes at all who fears all.

Emperor Claudius, as quoted by Montaigne

Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence.

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem