tragichappenings - Tumblr blog

[tragichappenings]

"He had been in the throes of some powerful and strange emotion, one that had all but put him in a dream, though every word being spoken around him still reached his ears with perfect clarity. He had felt as one standing in a boat on a wintry river, looking out into dense fog, knowing it would at any moment part to reveal vivid glimpses of the land ahead. And he had been caught in a kind of terror, yet at the same time had felt a curiosity - or something stronger and darker - and he had told himself firmly, 'Whatever it may be, let me see it, let me see it.'"

- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

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"Face all manner of challenge with gladness, even when fear seeps to the marrow, for if we're mortal let us at least shine handsomely in God's eyes while we walk this earth!"

- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

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"Was I to guess how dark the hearts of holy men could turn?"

- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

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"Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. You are in any case part of an ancient procession,"

- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

[tragichappenings]

"You can no more think about the world according to another man's system than you can look at it with a dead man's eye."

- First and Last Things, H.G. Wells

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"From the centre of that little world as primary, as the initiatory material, my perception of the world of fact widened and widened, by new sights and sounds, by reading and hearing descriptions and histories, by guesses and inferences ; my curiosity and interest, my appetite for fact, grew by what it fed upon, I carried on my expansion of the world of fact until it took me through the mineral and fossil galleries of the Natural History Museum, through the geological drawers of the College of Science, through a year of dissection and some weeks at the astronomical telescope. So I built up my conceptions of a real world out of facts observed and out of inferences of a nature akin to fact, of a world immense and enduring receding interminably into space and time. In that I found myself placed, a creature relatively infinitesimal, needing and struggling."

- First and Last Things, H.G. Wells

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"One may doubt whether one is perceiving or remembering or telling facts clearly, but the persuasion that there are facts independant of one's interpretations and obdurate to one's will remains invincible."

- First and Last Things, H.G. Wells

[tragichappenings]

"If the future holds travail and anguish in store, the self must be in existance, when that time comes, in order to experience it. But from this fate we are redeemed by death, which denies existance to the self that might have suffered these tribulations. Rest assured, therefore, that we have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born, when once this mortal life has been usurped by death the immortal."

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

[tragichappenings]

"Suppose that Nature herself were suddenly to find a voice and round upon one of us in these terms: 'What is your grievance, mortal, that you give yourself up to this whining and repining? Why do you weep and wail over death? If the life you have lived till now has been a pleasant thing - if all its blessings have not leaked away like water poured into a cracked pot and run to waste unrelished - why then, you silly creature, do you not retire as a guest who has had his fill of life and take your care-free rest with a quiet mind? Or, if all your gains have been poured profitless away and life has grown distasteful, why do you seek to swell the total? The new can but turn out as badly as the old and perish as unprofitably. Why not rather make an end of life and labour? Do you expect me to invent some new contrivance for your pleasure? I tell you, there is none. All things are always the same. If your body is not yet withered with age, nor your limbs decrepit and flagging, even so there is nothing new to look forward to - not though you should outlive all living creatures, or even though you should never die at all.' What are we to answer, except that Nature's rebuttal is justified and the plea she puts forward is a true one?"

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

[tragichappenings]

"Men feel plainly enough within their minds, a heavy burden, whose weight depresses them. If only they perceived with equal clearness the causes of this depression, the origin of this lump of evil within their breasts, they would not lead such a life as we now see all too commonly - no one knowing what he really wants and everyone for ever trying to get away from where he is, as though mere locomotion could throw off the load."

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

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"What is this deplorable lust of life that holds us trembling in bondage to such uncertainties and dangers? A fixed term is set to the life of mortals, and there is no way of dodging death. In any case the setting of our lives remains the same throughout, and by going on living we do not mint any new coin of pleasure. So long as the object of our craving is unattained, it seems more precious than anything besides. Once it is ours, we crave for something else. So an unquenchable thirst for life keeps us always on the gasp. There is no telling what fortune the future may bring - what chance may throw in our way, or what upshot lies in waiting. By prolonging life, we cannot subtract or whittle away one jot from the duration of our death. The time after our taking off remains constant. However many generations you may add to your shore by living, there waits for you none the less the same eternal death. The time of not-being will be no less for him who made an end of life with yesterday's daylight than for him who perished many a moon and many a year before."

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

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"New particles of radiance are always streaming down and their predecessors are consumed, as the saying goes, like wool being spun into the fire. So the earth is easily robbed of light and is correspondingly replenished and washes off the black stains of shadow."

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

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"There is nothing harder than to seperate the facts as revealed from the questionable interpretations promptly imposed on them by the mind."

- The Nature of the Universe, Lucretius

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"What a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect - to observe where they met, and where they seperated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at discord - there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation."

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

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"Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour."

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

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"Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them."

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

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"Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde