Quotations relevant to the Path

[Heith]

"I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young. And my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken; the shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may."


-Bram Stoker, "Dracula"

[Heith]

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”


― Bram Stoker, Dracula

[Silvaeon]

"For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one... And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other".

- The Chronicles of the Black Sword, from Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

[obnoxion]

We are in love's land to-day;
Where shall we go?

- Extract from a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne--

[Heith]

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Heith]

"A man's wishes may not always determine his destiny, his mission; perhaps there are other, predetermining factors"
-Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

[Insanus]

"By the term asceticism, which I have used so often, I mean in its narrower sense this intentional breaking of the will by the refusal of what is agreeable and the selection of what is disagreeable, the voluntarily chosen life of penance and self-chastisement for the continual mortification of the will.

We see this practised by him who has attained to the denial of the will in order to enable him to persist in it; but suffering in general, as it is inflicted by fate, is a second way (δευτερος πλους) of attaining to that denial. Indeed, we may assume that most men only attain to it in this way, and that it is the suffering which is personally experienced, not that which is merely known, which most frequently produces complete resignation, often only at the approach of death. "

-Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea

[Insanus]

Verily, love is death, and death is life to come.

Man returneth not again; the stream floweth not uphill; the old life is no more; there is a new life that is not his.

Yet that life is of his very essence; it is more He than all that he calls He.

In the silence of a dewdrop is every tendency of his soul, and of his mind, and of his body; it is the Quintessence and the Elixir of his being. Therein are the forces that made him and his father and his father's father before him.

This is the Dew of Immortality.

Let this go free, even at It will; thou art not its master, but the vehicle of It.

-Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies

[Insanus]

The term "little death", with which "la petite mort" is often compared, has a similar, though slightly different meaning. Namely, it means "a state or event resembling or prefiguring death; a weakening or loss of consciousness, specifically in sleep or during an orgasm". As with "la petite mort", the earlier attested uses are not related to sex or orgasm.

-Wikipedia, La petite mort

[Silvaeon]

I finished reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Really interesting book.

"Not just beautiful, though - the stars are like trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. What I've done up till now, what I'm going to do - they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just stars - how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?"

"We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn't have a form/. It's just a movement of air. You should listen carefully, and then you'll understand the metaphor."