"Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody — and I “know” nothing."

Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving

"Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky."

Nicole Krauss | The History of Love

"As bad tragic actors cannot sing alone, but in company with many: so some persons cannot walk about alone. Man, if you are anything, both walk alone and talk to yourself, and do not hide yourself in the chorus. Examine a little at last, look around, stir yourself up, that you may know who you are."

Epictetus | Discourses of Epictetus

"How can you conquer the opinion of another man? “By applying terror to it,” he replies, “I will conquer it.” Do you not know that opinion conquers itself, and is not conquered by another?"

Epictetus | Discourses of Epictetus

"Am I doing wrong then, my father, and do I not know what is suitable to me and becoming? If indeed this can neither be learned nor taught, why do you blame me? but if it can he taught, teach me; and if you cannot, allow me to learn from those who say that they know how to teach. For what do you think? do you suppose that I voluntarily fall into evil and miss the good? I hope that it may not be so. What is then the cause of my doing wrong? Ignorance. Do you not choose then that I should get rid of my ignorance? Who was ever taught by anger the art of a pilot or music? Do you think then that by means of your anger I shall learn the art of life?"

Epictetus | Discourses of Epictetus

"We must not believe the many, who say that free persons only ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers, who say that the educated only are free."

Epictetus | Discourses of Epictetus

"He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing."

Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve

Don’t allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven’t risen yet to the level of ourselves
Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth
The stature of a man is still notched
high up on a white door

From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet
and of a song rolled up like a cat
What passes doesn’t fall into a void
A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire
Don’t allow the lucid moment to dissolve
On a hard dry substance
you have to engrave the truth

Adam Zagajewski

On Reflection

That fire in the garden’s an illusion—
the double of the fire that cheers this room.
Now standing at the window in between them,
I watch the spiked montbretia suddenly bloom
and guess the glass is telling me a lie.
But no, the flames are there. I can’t deny
the evidence presented to my eye.
Only to my doubt can I appeal
for news of what is false and what is real.

Anne Stevenson

Ignorance

You know without understanding
You see without appreciating
You speak without listening
You hear without silence
You buy without needing
You read without feeling
You feel without caring
You love without living
You are without being.

Ian Beckett

A Poem

One cannot stay on the summit forever -
One has to come down again.
So why bother in the first place? Just this.
What is above knows what is below -
But what is below does not know what is above

One climb, one sees-
One descends and sees no longer
But one has seen!

There is an art of conducting one’s self in
The lower regions by the memory of
What one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see,
One does at least still know.

René Daumal

The Lamp

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something suddenly will happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandma crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing as much
as for that faith

Anna Kamieńska

"Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage - it is called the subconscious self; it dwells in your body, it is your body. There is more reason, sanity and intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom."

Friedrich Nietzsche | Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance."

Friedrich Nietzsche | Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"Blessed are those who are not afraid to admit that they don’t know something."