Author: Tetman Callis
Finding the lightFinding the light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP7DCXIrY2E
Better to be loathedBetter to be loathed
“If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” — Margaret Thatcher
The crucial splitThe crucial split
“In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” — Margaret Thatcher
Stepping outStepping out
“In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have really long legs.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. Hollingdale)
Stick a fork in itStick a fork in it
“People often ask how I know when I’m done—not just by when I’ve come to the end, but in all the drafts and revisions and substitutions of one word for another how do I know there is no more to do? When am I done? I just know. I’m lucky that way. What I know is that I can’t do any better; someone else might do better, but that’s all I can do; so I call it done.” – John McPhee, “Structure”
You missed your exitYou missed your exit
“If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that. You may see that your best ending is somewhere in there, that you were finished before you thought you were.” – John McPhee, “Structure”
The contemptive labor of rebirthThe contemptive labor of rebirth
“What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also.
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. But my happiness should justify existence itself!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
“The hour when you say: ‘What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals!’” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. Hollingdale)
Come with meCome with me
“All writing is a journey. You take the reader by the hand and you lead him somewhere. And you want to make sure he never lets go of your hand.” – Roger Ebert (quoted in “Roger Ebert: A film critic with the soul of a poet,” by Rick Kogan)
Dance the blight awayDance the blight away
“I ask myself what my body really wants from music generally. I believe it wants to have relief: so that all animal functions should be accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of golden, good, tender harmonies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and abysses of perfection: for this reason I need music.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Common)
How do you plead?How do you plead?
“Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Common)
Lesser is whatLesser is what
“Of what account is a book that never carries us away beyond all books?”– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Common)
The connectionThe connection
“The proof of any art’s lasting value is a comprehensive emotional necessity: it’s something that a person needed to do and which awakens and satisfies corresponding needs in us.” – Peter Schjeldahl, “Shapes of Things”
Marked for lifeMarked for life
“The writers we absorb when we’re young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.” – Daniel Mendelsohn, “The American Boy”
Do your homeworkDo your homework
“There is only one way to learn to write and that is by reading. Don’t read for duty, try all the good stuff though, sample it, then devour what stimulates and enriches you. This will seep in to your own work, which may be derivative at first but this does not matter. Your own style will develop later.” – Mary Renault (quoted by Daniel Mendelsohn in “The American Boy”)
For those moments when nothing else will doFor those moments when nothing else will do
Our freedom is in our ignoranceOur freedom is in our ignorance
“It behoveth thee not to grieve for that which must happen: for who can avert, by his wisdom, the decrees of fate? No one can leave the way marked out for him by Providence. Existence and non-existence, pleasure and pain all have Time for their root. Time createth all things and Time destroyeth all creatures. It is Time that burneth creatures and it is Time that extinguisheth the fire. All states, the good and the evil, in the three worlds, are caused by Time. Time cutteth short all things and createth them anew. Time alone is awake when all things are asleep: indeed, Time is incapable of being overcome. Time passeth over all things without being retarded. Knowing, as thou dost, that all things past and future and all that exist at the present moment, are the offspring of Time, it behoveth thee not to throw away thy reason.” — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, The Mahabharata: Adi Parva (trans. Roy)
Infinite slices of lossInfinite slices of loss
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” —Susan Sontag, On Photography
Nice blendNice blend
“There are in all nine virtues, and when we say that a man possesses these virtues it is as much as to say that he begins to do such and such things. They are liberality combined with dignity, mildness combined with firmness, bluntness combined with respect, aptness for government combined with caution, docility combined with boldness, straightforwardness combined with gentleness, easy negligence combined with discrimination, resolution combined with sincerity, and courage combined with justice. If these are apparent, and that continuously, how fortunate it will be.” — Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (trans. Allen)
And they, likewise, to usAnd they, likewise, to us
“The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)
Look over there!Look over there!
“Whenever a person reveals something, one can ask: what is it supposed to conceal? From what is it supposed to divert the eyes? What prejudice is it supposed to arouse? And additionally: how far does the subtlety of this dissimulation go? And in what way has it failed?” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)
The lifelong search for the perpetually recedingThe lifelong search for the perpetually receding
“In our youth we take our teachers and guides from the time in which we happen to live and the circle in which we happen to move: we are thoughtlessly confident that the times we live in are bound to have teachers better suited to us than to anyone else and that we are bound to find them without much trouble. For this childishness we have in later years to pay a heavy price: we have to expiate our teachers in ourself. We then perhaps go in search of our true guides throughout the whole world, the world of the past included—but perhaps it is too late. And in the worst case we discover that they were living when we were young—and that we missed them.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (emphasis in original; trans. Hollingdale)
Perpetual motionPerpetual motion
“The poor sheep say to their shepherd: ‘go on ahead and we shall never lack the courage to follow you’. The poor shepherd, however, thinks to himself: ‘follow me and I shall never lack the courage to lead you’.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)
. . . .. . . .
“If one stays silent for a year one unlearns chattering and learns to speak.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (trans. Hollingdale)
Glad this doesn’t happen to anyone we knowGlad this doesn’t happen to anyone we know
“Poor, happy and independent!—these things can go together; poor, happy and a slave!—these things can also go together—and I can think of no better news I could give to our factory slaves: provided, that is, they do not feel it to be in general a disgrace to be thus used, and used up, as a part of a machine and as it were a stopgap to fill a hole in human inventiveness! To the devil with the belief that higher payment could lift from them the essence of their miserable condition—I mean their impersonal enslavement! To the devil with the idea of being persuaded that an enhancement of this impersonality within the mechanical operation of a new society could transform the disgrace of slavery into a virtue! To the devil with setting a price on oneself in exchange for which one ceases to be a person and becomes a part of a machine! Are you accomplices in the current folly of the nations—the folly of wanting above all to produce as much as possible and to become as rich as possible? What you ought to do, rather, is hold up to them the counter-reckoning: how great a sum of inner value is thrown away in pursuit of this external goal! But where is your inner value if you no longer know what it is to breathe freely? if you no longer possess the slightest power over yourselves? if you all too often grow weary of yourselves like a drink that has been left too long standing? if you pay heed to the newspapers and look askance at your wealthy neighbour, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money and opinions? if you no longer believe in philosophy that wears rags, in the free-heartedness of him without needs? if voluntary poverty and freedom from profession and marriage, such as would very well suit the more spiritual among you, have become to you things to laugh at? If, on the other hand, you have always in your ears the flutings of the Socialist pied-pipers whose design is to enflame you with wild hopes? which bid you to be prepared and nothing further, prepared day upon day, so that you wait and wait for something to happen from outside and in all other respects go on living as you have always lived—until this waiting turns to hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and at last the day of the bestia triumphans dawns in all its glory?”– Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (emphasis in original; trans. Hollingdale)
Up to and including summary executionUp to and including summary execution
“Above all, in every state it is necessary, both by the laws and every other method possible, to prevent those who are employed by the public from being venal.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)
A maxim we’ve been minimizingA maxim we’ve been minimizing
“It is a general maxim in democracies, oligarchies, monarchies, and indeed in all governments, not to let any one acquire a rank far superior to the rest of the community, but rather to endeavour to confer moderate honours for a continuance than great ones for a short time; for these latter spoil men, for it is not every one who can bear prosperity: but if this rule is not observed, let not those honours which were conferred all at once be all at once taken away, but rather by degrees. But, above all things, let this regulation be made by the law, that no one shall have too much power, either by means of his fortune or friends.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)
Up above our headsUp above our heads
Snowden & Manning, LTD.Snowden & Manning, LTD.
“Governments are sometimes preserved not only by having the means of their corruption at a great distance, but also by its being very near them; for those who are alarmed at some impending evil keep a stricter hand over the state; for which reason it is necessary for those who have the guardianship of the constitution to be able to awaken the fears of the people, that they may preserve it, and not like a night-guard to be remiss in protecting the state, but to make the distant danger appear at hand.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)
No jaywalking, nowNo jaywalking, now
“In well-tempered governments it requires as much care as anything whatsoever, that nothing be done contrary to law: and this ought chiefly to be attended to in matters of small consequence; for an illegality that approaches insensibly, approaches secretly.” — Aristotle, A Treatise on Government (trans. Ellis)