cytaty – Solipsism

Through the Looking-Glass

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll – Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Insufferable Negligence

Błażej Pascal - francuski matematyk, fizyk i religijny filozof

We know well enough how those who are of this mind behave. They believe they have made great efforts for their instruction, when they have spent a few hours in reading some book of Scripture, and have questioned some priest on the truths of the faith. After that, they boast of having made vain search in books and among men. But, verily, I will tell them what I have often said, that this negligence is insufferable. We are not here concerned with the trifling interests of some stranger, that we should treat it in this fashion; the matter concerns ourselves and our all.

Let them at least learn what is the religion they attack, before attacking it. If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But since, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, D e u s a b s c o n d i t u s [Isaiah 45:15, a God who hides Himself] – what advantage can they obtain, when, in the negligence with which they make profession of being in search of the truth, they cry out that nothing reveals it to them?

Blaise Pascal – Pensées

Egoism

Each book is always only a book; that all words are always only words; they are never what they—with more or less success—try to describe.

There is a prison. In the cell there is a prisoner, on the watchtower there is a security guard. These two are one person. The prisoner is also his own guard, the guard is at the same time his own prisoner. But these two, prisoner and guard, they do not see that each of them is both one and the other. Even when sometimes it happens to the prisoner that he manages to escape from the cell and the prison building, he escapes with his invisible guard on his back and consequently what seemed to be freedom turns out to be just another form of prison. In the same way, the guard returning after service to his hometown, takes the invisible prisoner under the cap and wakes up at night, sweaty and scared, because he was dreaming what guards might dream up, namely, that the prisoner fled from prison. You’re the prisoner and the guard, the cell and the watchtower, the whole edifice of the prison, and all the so-called freedom.

The greatest mystery is that the there is no mistery. In fact, everything is open, everything is clear, everything is clean, everything is absolutely beautifully transparent. The night is just to die. The day is just to live. One day is a lifetime.

Before all journeys: to the Bieszczady Mountains, the Yucatan, Patagonia, around the world, to the North Pole, the South, the Moon, Mars, Venus, wherever, before all these trips – there is one true and absolute journey: into yourself.

Edward Stachura – Fabula Rasa (about egoism)

Otro loco mas

Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours.

What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

Ernest Hemingway – A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Joy

He was a very serious, very earnest and very conscientious dope. It was impossible to go to a movie with him without getting involved afterwards in a discussion on empathy, Aristotle, universals, messages and the obligations of the cinema as an art form in a materialistic society. He was a militant idealist who crusaded against racial bigotry by growing faint in its presence. He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

Joseph Heller – Catch 22