"Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."
John Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis
"Just as countries that have broken free of the chains of imperialism strive as much as possible to recognize each other as equals, in the territory of art attention is being given to the types of boundaries and relations of expression where self encounters other (rather than constructing a painted empire on canvas through representations of the self). Expression achieves externality and imagination is liberated by structuring an interactive site where dialogue between inside and outside is possible. Using ambiguous expression that is simultaneously passive and active, I hope to cut into the controlled everyday reality of industrial society, breathing fresh air into it and stimulating an awareness of infinity that transcends the human, to awaken a world that is always open."
In Search of Encounter: The Sources of Contemporary Art” (1970), in Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (New York: Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, 2011)
(Source: absorptions)
"Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with thee.
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!"
Polonius to his son, Laertes [Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82]
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/thine-own-self-true
http://www.enotes.com/hamlet-text/act-i-scene-iii#ham-1-3-82
An excerpt from The Lady Shalott by Lord Tennyson.
“Who is this?
And what is here?”
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
(Source: Wikipedia)
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question."
John Stuart Mill
Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a “brain the size of a planet” which he is seldom (if ever) given the chance to use. Indeed, the true horror of Marvin’s existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human, (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress) though this is, if anything, a vast underestimation. When kidnapped by the bellicose Krikkit robots and tied to the interfaces of their intelligent war computer, Marvin simultaneously manages to plan the entire planet’s military strategy, solve “all of the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except his own, three times over,” and compose a number of lullabies. He seemed to find this last task the hardest, and only one, “How I Hate the Night”, is known.
Source: Wikipedia
