A Quote by Marina Warner

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.
What is required is the finding of that Immovable Point within one's self, which is not shaken by any of those tempests which the Buddhists call 'the eight karmic winds': 1-fear of pain, 2-desire for pleasure; 3-fear of loss; 4-desire for gain; 5-fear of blame, 6-desire for praise; 7-fear of disgrace; [and] 8-desire for fame.
I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?
Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.
You used to say. "Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness." Madness doubled is marriage I added when the caustic was cool, not intending to produce a golden rule.
After she's gone, another brief lull sets in. This one is probably the last. But what good is a lull? It's only a breathing spell in which to get more frightened. Because anticipatory fear is always twice as strong as present fear. Anticipatory fear has both fears in it at once - the anticipatory one and the one that comes simultaneously with the dread happening itself. Present fear only has the one, because by that time anticipation is over.
We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.
Life found itself alive and somehow knew its opposite was death. We are ever being born, or dying, and the thrill of choosing is ours. Only once, must we be born without our own consent. Only once, must we die without our own permission
While F.D.R. once told Americans that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ashcroft is delighted to play the part of Fear Itself, an assignment in which he lets his imagination run riot.
The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.
Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).
Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).
For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
Remember that hate is not the opposite of love as people think. Hate is love standing upside down; it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely. In love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all. Love is when you have known your inner sky. There is no higher religion than love
Out of need springs desire, and out of desire springs the energy and the will to win.
True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.
Horror itself in that fair scene looks gay, And joy springs up e'en in the midst of fear. [It., Bello in si bella vista anco e l'orrore, E di mezzo la tema esce il diletto.]
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