What follows is a collection of one-liners and quotations that have shaped my perspective on Man and his relation to the World. In a small sense, they have defined me. I will continue to add to this page as I revisit the works of my favorite writers and philosophers. We will start with these:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Jean-Paul Sartre
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive. Friedrich Nietzsche
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. Ernest Hemingway
Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire. Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Where men can't live gods fare no better. Cormac McCarthy, The Road
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. David Foster Wallace, This Is Water
What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings. David Foster Wallace
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
