on that note...
So, to cleanse the palate from all that being and non-being, and to leave something on the page while I am away, here's a nice Dostyevsky quote I saw in the Pittsburgh City Paper:
"The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying- lying to others and to yourself." --Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
So, go ye now and have a long hard self-contemplative moment :-) I'll be back at the end of the week.
Comments
Welcome back!! I know you are there. *Blogland* awaits.
Posted by: Jane | Agosto 14, 2005 05:43 PM
What's wrong, does Fyodor fail to inspire? I mean really, it looks like a harmless enough quote, but it could be challenged. What is this, lying to yourself? How is that possible? How can a single mind contain both the agent and the recipient of the lie? A lie implies both awareness of the truth of one state of affairs and creation of a fictional tale known to at least partly or fully contradict reality. And the success of a lie relies on a receiving party that accepts the untruthful statement as fact -- ignorant of both the real state of affairs and the fictional status of the current story being presented. So, it's all a bit paradoxical, don't you think? And yet all these Polonius-esque maxims (to thine own self be true...) strike us as eminantly reasonable and natural and we all "know" what it is to lie to ourselves. Do we? What is it? How does it work?
There you go. have fun.
Posted by: Karin | Agosto 14, 2005 11:16 PM
I'll let John field this one; he's a *nice* person.
An inability to have fun, play or whatever--or maybe to recognize when we do--seems to run in our family. We just work or "make work" or worry about work or feel guilty because we haven't accomplished enough work, or that what we have done is not good enough work--I'm in an extra sour mood. There you go.
Posted by: Jane | Agosto 15, 2005 12:14 AM
don't suppose you have publication and page information on that lovely quote by Dostoyevsky. Can't find an electronic copy and don't quite have the time to find it.
Posted by: Jet Li | Septiembre 13, 2005 04:37 AM