If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.
The effect of any form of materialism is to treat all men – including oneself – as objects, which is to say as a set of predetermined reactions indistinguishable from the properties and phenomena that constitute, say, a table, a chair, or a stone. Our aim is exactly to establish the human kingdom as a set of values distinct from the material world.
I marvel at these young people: drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If they are asked what they did yesterday, they aren’t embarrassed: they bring you up to date in a few words. If I were in their place, I’d fall over myself. It’s true that no one has bothered about how I spend my time for a long while. When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends.
The existentialist cannot accept that man can be helped by any sign on earth, for he will interpret the sign as he chooses.
The existentialist portrays a coward as one who makes himself a coward by his actions, a hero who makes himself heroic.
You might think that there’s some authority you could look for to answers, but all of the authorities you can think of are fake.
A veces las pesadillas que estamos persiguiendo, terminamos siendo nosotros mismos.
La memoria y el olvido son como dos lados de mi ser. Dos caras de una misma moneda.
Sus ojos deambularon con el cantar del viento. Era un susurro que consigo se llevaba a la tempestad de aquel sentimiento.
Nunca es tarde para ser libres.
Toda aventura merece ser escuchada.
The slower your brain is at processing sensory information, the faster time seems to run, and vice versa’ How.
As Erich Fromm put it, “Modern man thinks he loses something – time – when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains – except kill it.
The brain’s auditory cortex, for instance, processes an audio signal from your ear faster than a visual signal is processed in the visual cortex. The difference is around 40 milliseconds, which is not much, but enough to justify using a gun for starting a race, instead of a light flash. The faster audio processing speed means that sprint runners react more quickly to a bang than to a flash of light.
The slower your brain is in processing sensory information, the faster time seems to run. This seemingly inverse relationship is important to understand why we sometimes experience time as speeding up or slowing down. So how fast are we actually processing reality?
You can divide your money between things like clothes, a new car, or a fancy dinner, but you can spend your time on only one thing at a time.
The universe does not know that you exist, does not care that you exist, and is not really interested in your desires. No matter how hard you think about something, it will not be yours if you do not do anything about it.
In this world it is much easier to hear the echo than the answer.
I need a goldfish,’ mumbled Guylain. Need –that was indeed the word. He was truly addicted to the golden creatures. Guylain could no longer cope without that silent, colourful presence gracing his bedside table. From experience, he knew that there was a vast difference between living alone and living alone with a goldfish.
Although a smile costs nothing, it can on the other hand earn you a lot.
Every man ought to say to himself, “Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?