Overheard on the radio -

"God exists in this world, like poetry in poems. You have to read into it, and your understanding of it matures and deepens with age."

x

Slow water runs deep

Amazing photography by Osma Harvilahti

Being profound and seeming profound. - Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.

Nietzsche

Reminder to Self

Left-brained

'...dans les champs de l'observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.'

(In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.)

Louis Pasteur

Nietzsche: A Letter to His Sister

'Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent waverings of one's feelings and even one's conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternal goal of the true, the beautiful, and the good? Is it decisive after all that we arrive at the view of God, world and reconciliation which makes us most comfortable? Rather, is not the result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to the true inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth -- even if it be the most abhorrent and ugly.... Here the ways of man part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.'

For the new year: Read lots, wear little.

He has bestowed us the greatest strength;

*from here

'Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.'

Goethe

Paris Review, Philip Larkin (Summer 1982)

Les chaussures rouges

*here

'A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something of yours to press against my heart.'

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe