The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.
Samuel BeckettRelated topics
attainment effort intellectual joy sorrowRelated quotes
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
William Wordsworth
When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept -- the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.
John Updike
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.
Georg Brandes