creative arts

The thinker…

‘Well, this is it!’  In a mirror, in a selfie, in some form of congealed apathy?  This is it!  Unless, we write about it.  Ponder it.  Mistake it for being something it isn’t.  This is it!  And, it is soulfully, up to the artist to render it…make it better.’

• I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

 

• Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

• It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
  Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
  Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
  Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

• I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
  Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
  When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
  No rhetoric, no tremolos,
  no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
  And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
  Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, 
completely unencumbered.

 

• It is natural to believe in God when you’re alone– quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

 

• It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

• Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?” asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. “I ate civilization.”

 

 

-There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

 

“Then you think there is no God?”

“No, I think there quite probably is one.”

“Then why? …”

Mustapha Mond checked him. “But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that’s described in these books. Now …”

“How does he manifest himself now?” asked the Savage.

“Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.” 

aldous huxley quotes