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| QUOTATIONS 415-459 |
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| 415. If balloons had minds, they would have probably avoided contacts with any sharp objects in the same way as the pompous but insecure mediocrities , who always , as if guided by the sixth sense, try to stay as far as possible from anyone clever and witty. 416. Janus, the two-faced God whose temple's doors stayed open during the war and closed when the ancient Rome was at peace, can also be looked upon, with some justification, as a God of Art, criticism in general, and Literary criticism in particular. For this peculiar art (peculiar because it does not actually create anything independently) also displays, as Janus, the two-sided nature in its ability to judge any work of art from at least two diametrically opposed perspectives. And anyone familiar with the works of art and literature has to concede that even the best of them (or perhaps, especially the best) often lend themselves to the totally contradictory judgements. Consider, for example, Hamlet. Is he a tragic figure, grappling with the eternal questions of life and death, or is he a conceited pretender with a hypertrophied inferiority complex? Or is he the both and many things more? The source of this ambiguity is the reality itself, which arts and literature reflect with varying degrees of accuracy, because in reality, as we all know, "from the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step", or to be more precise, sublime and ridiculous , wise and foolish, tragic and comic, etc. are usually the different sides of the same phenomenon. And it is in the critic's hand and power to emphasize one side and to disregard the other. And that is the basis of theirs, sometimes enormous clout. 417. What shall it profit a man to have an open mind when his heart is closed? 418. The greatest gift gods have bestowed upon mortals is their seemingly infinite capacity for self-deception. Or is it the men's greatest curse? 419. In today's world antisemitism is the last refuge of a racist. 420. "Know thyself" and your limitations, both internal (personal and subjective) and external (objective). Do not compare, constantly, yourself or your life with that of the others, neither those who are better nor who are worse off than you are. For everyone is different and so are the circumstances of one's life. You yourself is the only true measure of your success or failure, satisfaction or disappointment, happiness or misery. 421.To those who want to change the world I would suggest to try first to change a single man or a woman, and then to consider the fact that there are more than 5 billions of them. 422. Having never lived in England I am not sure if it has ever or is a nation of shopkeepers. But I am absolutely certain that America is and seems to be destined to remain forever the nation of salesmen. 423. One is always striving for what one presumably lacking, and, assuming that in this case the reverse proposition is equally true, what one is lacking can be inferred from what one is striving for. Thus, the one who is searching for an ideal and professes to be an idealist is, in all probability, essentially a realist, while the other, who is looking for what is real and calls himself a realist, surely must be, in his heart, an idealist. For both are longing for completeness, for the other half of the whole. 424. Some people ( God knows how many) have to be protected first of all from themselves and only then from anything and anybody else. 425. When one thinks of ever present and seemingly endless possibilities to make new mistakes, why waste all that precious time on repeating the old ones? 426. A lot of people would rather lose but have it their way than win following somebody else's good advice. For, apparently, man values the sovereignty of his decisions more than their end results. And here, I would suggest, lies, perhaps, one of the possible explanations why, despite so many excellent solutions to men's problems, known and offered again and again from the time immemorial, the results are still far from satisfactory. 427. How can one expect those, who claim to be indifferent to their own pain, to have any compassion for somebody else's suffering. 428. For some people being flexible simply means trying to have it both ways. 429. The present world, at least as far as the balance between good and evil is concerned, is not that much different from the world of the past. For though our capacity to do good has increased manifold, the means of causing evil not only never lagged far behind but on too many occasions seemed to overtake it. 430. Behind the passionate rhetoric of nationalism, with its incessant evocation of the national uniqueness, spirit, culture, pride, etc., there are always the pragmatic and materialistic, mundane and crass, and mostly mistakenly perceived self-interests. 431. In most real-life situations, when we have to choose between the two or more equally possible but contrary responses, the greatest difficulty usually confronting us is the realization that almost any course of action we choose entails both winning and losing. And nobody can predict the future on which, in the final analysis, the outcome of all our decisions depends. 432. Trying not to repeat the mistakes their parents had made often becomes the children's obsession. As if haunted by the parents' unhappiness (however correctly or incorrectly perceived), the children would resolve to have "completely different" lives. And yet this, even if they succeed, does not always bring their own happiness. For the different life only presents them with almost infinite opportunities to make different mistakes. As a result, a life different from somebody else's unhappy one is not necessarily happy but rather the one which is differently ( if this is of any solace ) unhappy. Making the goal of one's own life to right the wrongs of somebody else's is not only futile but self-destructive, for any actions which are engendered not by natural inclinations but by the spirit of contrariety are , at the end , harmful to us. 433. Both the economic prosperity and social advantages in life are based on a monopoly ,i.e. the exclusive possession or control of something, and whenever any sphere of human endeavour becomes open to all members of the society at large it ceases to be profitable in both aforementioned senses, as anyone, previously excluded but now a beneficiary of the universal accessibility, discovers sooner or later. 434. An equitable redistribution of wealth, both as an idea and as a practice is much more appealing to those living in a culture of scarcity than that of an abundance. For the first are preoccupied mainly with the mere survival, while the second - with indulgence into the conspicuous consumption which inevitably leads to competition, i.e. trying to be better or better off than the others, and competition, by definition, is incompatible with equality. Therefore, it is not surprising that socialism, which is predicated on the equitable redistribution of wealth, has been embraced primarily by the poor nations ( especially in times when sharing became the necessity of life), and almost uniformly rejected by the rich ones. Yet, even the poor countries could not stick to it for long, since a constant comparison of their low standard of living with that of the rich ones produced chronic dissatisfaction and the nagging , irresistible desire "to keep up with the Joneses". This can only lead us to the two equally inevitable conclusions. First, given the existence of the rich nations which are not just enjoying but constantly bragging about and promoting their way of life, it is psychologically impossible to maintain for a long time the purity of the egalitarian socialism in a poor country due to a quite natural envy and jealousy of its inhabitants toward the higher standards of living in the rich capitalist countries (somehow, nobody pays attention to the poor ones). Second, closely following the first, is that socialism is only possible when it encompasses the whole world, provided this world remains in a perpetual state of scarcity. Judging by the economic conditions the overwhelming majority of the world's's population are in today, it seems we are much closer to this state than we would have liked to be. 435. In the future, as in the past, only those will be content, if not happy, who would be able to accept and settle for the dignified poverty. 436. What do people gain by telling lies? Mostly this - even when they speak the truth they aren't believed any more. 437. To love is to be loved To hate is to be hated One always gets back what one intends to give, as if it has been fated. 438. Originality, ideally at least, should be the goal of every artist. Whether in painting, or in writing, or in any other form of art, an ambitious artist (and majority of them, if not all, are) usually wants either to say something new, or to do it in a way more or less different than it had been done before, or, preferably, both. Therefore, the two distinctive types of originality can be identified in the creative process - the originality of a substance and the originality of a form. The fact that these two types are different, as far as the means of achieving the desirable ends are concerned, is obvious. What is not so apparent, at first, is the difference in their respective limitations, for the originality of substance is limited by our capacity, as consumers of art, to know, and the originality of form - by our ability to apprehend what we perceive (the first supposes to increase our understanding, the second - to enhance our perception). The valid claim could be made that our capacity to know, judging by the progress of human knowledge and understanding both of the physical world of Nature and psychological world of Man, is, at least theoretically, limitless. Not so without ability to apprehend what we perceive. For though the artists' ingenuity to invent newer and newer forms of expression is seemingly boundless, the ability of the viewers, readers, listeners of music, etc. is not. For example, to use language as a metaphor, we are able to comprehend, more or less, our mother tongue in all its numerous varieties of accents and dialects. But there is a point at which after a long period of mutations it becomes a completely foreign language, totally incomprehensible to us. And so, in any art, each with its own special language, there comes a moment when a new and original form, instead of being a differently shaped window on the world, becomes an impenetrable wall - the ultimate barrier (the mother tongue by getting less and less familiar eventually becomes a foreign one). The most vivid instance of this phenomenon can be observed in the development of the modern visual art, which from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th progressed (or shall we say, regressed) , in the search of the new forms of expression, from the representational realism to impressionism, cubism, etc., until it has finally reached the state of complete abstractionism, totally incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of the viewers. The same trend (and during the same period of time) could be traced, to a somewhat lesser degree, in poetry and music, to name just a few. Either the lack of understanding or, worse, the blatant, even militant disregard by the artists, striving to come up with the newer and newer forms, of the limitation of human perception, has lead eventually to their inevitable rejection by the public at large. For they, the artists, have forgotten, at their own peril, the fundamental law of communication - one cannot speak to others in a language foreign to them and expect (never mind demand) to be understood. 439. As far as I am concerned, the only good thing about the literary criticism is that it reminds me of the need to read the real books. 440. September went, still warm but wet, no summer more, nor autumn yet. October suddenly arrived, the morning frost, the graying sky. November took leaves from the trees, caused birds to flee and people sneeze. December covered land with snow, put bears to sleep, froze high and low. And then we settled all to wait for Spring, as imminent as fate. 441. The best way to forget your own worries is to start worrying about somebody else's ones. 442. The institution of family is the altar on which the lives and aspirations of its individual members are sacrificed in the name of the real or imagined "good" of the family as a whole. 443. For many a wife (and for some husbands) sex, like diplomacy for governments, is a continuation of the "domestic war" by other means. 444. The older my body gets the more it becomes the source of pain and less of pleasure. 445. The main drawback about being an atheist is having nothing to do on Sunday. 446. There is one very important truth all politicians should know better than anybody else and yet, always tend to forget it first: no matter how convincing you are, you would never persuade people to accept your point of view if they had already made up their minds before you even began to speak. 447. I start to sense the looming death, its careful touch, its silent breath, no rush, no hurry, for it has the patience of assured success. 448. The difference in the ways one derives wisdom out of reading philosophical as opposed to fictional writings (provided, of course, that both contain wisdom) is the same as the difference between obtaining vitamins by swallowing a pill as opposed to eating an orange. 449. The 999th poem about the atomic bomb, the 555th book about the Holocaust - how one to endure, let alone put an end to this relentless trivialization of the most tragically significant events? 450. There is nothing but reality. Even the most outlandishly "unreal" myths are made up out of her elements by putting what is incompatible and contradictory together, like, for example, joining half of a man and half of a horse to create a centaur. 451. Whatever you do or say, remember that your race, nation, class, profession, in short, any group you belong to, will be collectively held responsible for what you, as its representative member, have said or done. For no matter how enlightened, we are all guilty of committing at one time or another the so-called "fallacy of the hasty generalization" when, after observing that a small number or a special sort of the members of a particular group possess some characteristic, it is assumed that the whole group must have it as well. 452. Artists could be divided into the two main groups, depending on the stage of cognition they are depicting in their works. For the process of cognition also consists of the two main stages. The first, or primary stage, is the immediate perception through the senses and mental faculties. The second stage involves organizing, analysing and interpreting the material of the first into opinions , notions and ,hopefully, understanding. Accordingly, the artists (in whatever medium they work ) either create on the basis of the first stage of cognition by describing what they experience, or on the basis of the second stage by telling what they " feel and think". Nowhere this division is more pronounced than in poetry. The following are the descriptions of a lake, as an example of the first stage of cognition and creation, and the reflection on an autumn, as an example of the second. LAKE I saw the sun sink behind the lake and fizzle out, and saw the clouds gather in a mob, the lake is cold and bloody, rabid. Small waves beat the shore, grating against the sand, and sea weed tossed and broken washes up brown on the beach. AUTUMN Blood of red leaves spills on the ground, the air is swelling with decay, but I smell flowers-flooded May, I hear spring thunder's ruptured sound. So, I will have to reconcile spring thunder with a fall decay gloom of November, hope of May once more, just for a little while. 453. Truth needs but a few words, lie never has enough. 454. The best way to learn is by teaching, for in order to teach we must first clarify things to ourselves, which means to learn. That is why those who like to learn are usually in a habit of teaching (whether asked or not) not realizing that this, often uncontrollable impulse, to teach others is a product of the subconscious desire to assure themselves of their own knowledge. 455. Many a man would have been teachers if not for the lack of the disciples. 456. In the middle of a hustle and a bustle, stop and look around. Don't float like a dead wood, till you run aground. 457. Man is born with the innate capacity and need to love and to hate. For even the cruelest monster loves somebody, if not a man then a pet. And even the kindest saint does hate somebody, if not a man then a bed-bug. 458.Contrary to the popular assumptions and expectations, today's experience of a great tragedy does not make a man impervious to tomorrow's petty irritants. One can be totally devastated by the loss of the nearest and dearest one day and then later, some other day, be as upset as the next man over the loss of keys or something of the sort. And neither the suffering of the great physical pain in the past can make a man immune to even the smallest one in the present or future. One who has been tortured and mutilated yesterday would still feel the pain caused by nothing more than a prick of a needle tomorrow. As long as he lives, man will never grow accustomed to pain, neither to the emotional nor to the physical one. For being alive entails feeling of pain, and to feel pain means to be alive. The price of life is life itself the awesome price to pay for rich or poor, for ill or well, but that's the only way. 459. I weep, remembering my youth, naivete and search for truth, when deaf and blind with my thoughts I could not know who was what. My friends, they hardly were my friends, and used me for their own ends. For I was smart and had strong arms taught them to think and saved from harm But I, of course, had used them too, the one wrong thing we all must do in order to avoid the pain of loneliness, not a small gain. Yet, I suspect that even then they knew I wasn't one of them. They couldn't help but feel that I saw all things with a stranger's eyes. Then, after many years had passed, I met them, one by one, at last. They were too old, I was too wise for me to miss, for them disguise old jealousies, resentment, anger with me, who once was smarter and stronger. When they, resentful, tried to prove that this is no longer true, made me, at long last, understand I've never had a single friend. |
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