Miscellaneous quotation

"Every body, every quality of a body, resolves itself into an enormous number of vibrations, movements, changes. . . . Philosophy has long dismissed the notion of substance and modern physics had endorsed the dismissal. . . . How then does the world come to appear to us as a collection of solid, static objects extended in space? Because of the intellect, which presents us with a false view of it."
--Dr. Joad, quoted by Wallace Stevens in "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

Miscellaneous quotation

"Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent must function also as a deflection of reality."
--Kenneth Burke

Lewis Carroll, Excerpt from "Through the Looking-Glass"

"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

William Cowper, "Retirement"

Philologists who chase 
A panting syllable through time and space, 
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, 
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah’s Ark. 
--William Cowper, "Retirement"

Giacomo Leopardi, "Zibaldone"

"Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions."

--Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115276/giacomo-leopardis-zibaldone-reviewed-adam-kirsch

cf. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/10/greatest-intellectual-diary-italian-literature/;

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/feb/10/magic-leopardi/

Herman Hesse, "The Fog"

To wander in fog—how queer!
Lonely are bush and stone,
No tree sees the other near,
Each is alone.

Once my world was full of friends,
When my life still had light;
Now that the fog descends,
Not one is in sight.

Only he is wise who knows
The steady gloom to fall
That slowly round him grows,
Severed from all.

To wander in fog—how queer!
Solitude is life’s own.
No man sees the other near,
Each is alone.

--Herman Hesse, "The Fog"

William James, Excerpt from "The Principles of Psychology"

When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence, the other knows his meaning and replies. Such genial play with such massive materials, such an easy flashing of light over far perspectives, such careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordinarily surround a subject and seem to pertain to its essence, make these conversations seem true feasts for gods to a listener who is educated enough to follow them at all. . . .

--William James, The Principles of Psychology