A Quote by Catherine Drinker Bowen
There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.
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To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.
Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or yen for others.
Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.
What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.
But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.
It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
About California... "I thought it was an appalling place. Then I went through a period of being amused by it. Now it's sort of both. Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.
There is no such thing as unconsciousness for it is not experienceable. We infer unconsciousness when there is a lapse in memory or communication.
Part of what makes you great as a young player can hurt you at the end of your career, in terms of you need a certain amount of ego, a certain amount of arrogance to be able to play well and to push yourself and trick yourself into thinking you're better than you really are.
To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing.
I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.
Reality is the apparent absence of contradiction. The marvelous is the eruption of contradiction within the real.
Apparent confusion is a product of good order; apparent cowardice, of courage; apparent weakness, of strength.
While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.
A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
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