#owl

Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men. ↗

— John Knowles

#gene #john-knowles #phineas #tree #men

Men forget where the way leads and what they meet with every day seems strange to them.We should not act and speak like men asleep. ↗

— Heraclitus

#men

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#knowledge #wisdom #men

Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity. ↗

— J. P. Vinluca

#fools #knowledge #men #power #vanity

But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders -- oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe." His warm, deep voice ended, and there was only the roar of the engine. Will looked out over the grey-misted fields, silent. "There was a great long speech, now," John Rowlands said awkwardly. "But I was only saying, be careful not to forget that there are people in this valley who can be hurt, even in the pursuit of good ends. ↗

— Susan Cooper

#the-dark-is-rising #the-grey-king #men

Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies—my only talent—smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire. ↗

— Walker Percy

#knowledge #life #malaise #life

But I knew how the play would come out. This was like a dress rehearsal after the show has closed down. ↗

— Robert Penn Warren

#men

To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#knowledge

Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. ↗

— George Eliot

#knowledge #memory #poverty #work #poverty

It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me. ↗

— John Fowles

#the-collector #men