TO DIE IS TO PASS INTO FICTION
Hilary Mantel:
As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone and you will see what I mean.
EMERGING MYSTERIES WITH AGING
Aldous Huxley:
… do you feel, as I do, that the older one gets, the more unutterably mysterious, unlikely and totally implausible one’s own life and the universe at large steadily become?
PARTS OF A WHOLE
Marcus Aurelius:
No matter whether the universe is a confusion of atoms or a natural growth, let my first conviction be that I am part of a Whole which is under Nature’s governance; and my second, that a bond of kinship exists between myself and all other similar parts.
STOP WITH THE PROCRASTINATING, ALREADY!
Marcus Aurelius:
Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.
WITTICISM AS CRITICISM
Charles Hartshorne:
As my first teacher in the subject (Rufus Jones of Haverford College) put it, “Every system has an impasse in it somewhere.
THE RISKS OF FREEDOM
Charles Hartshorne:
Before humanity there were far fewer terrible risks for life on this planet. It is the price of our escape from the relative tyranny of instinct that we are uniquely exposed to the perils of being able to fall into drastic conflict with our fellows and with the nonhuman animal life around us.