Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, a...
Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground – I screamed and instantly ran mad. We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses, some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an Hour and a Quarter did we continue in this unfor...
If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they w...
In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written t...
But that delusional urge is only one of the varieties of self-deception that encourage us to believe we know another human being and, for that matter, ourselves. This faith in having the measure of others really becomes unstuck when you begin to cons...
Forrest Gander: "Maybe the best we can do is try to leave ourselves unprotected. To keep brushing off habits, how we see things and what we expect, as they crust around us. Brushing the green flies of the usual off the tablecloth. To pay attention.
We, who are so schooled in the art of listening to the voices of others, can often hear our own voice only when we are alone. . . For many women, the first choice, then, is to give ourselves the necessary time and space in which to renew our acquaint...
Do you like my working persona?" Saiman asked softly. "An aesthetically pleasing combination of intelligence and elegance, wouldn't you say?" Aren't we pleased with ourselves. "Are you Chinese, Japanese, half-white? I can't tell, your features are ne...
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault whi...
High Europe always played at ethnic contempt because it was High Europe, and so had the strength, the authority, to make the racial rules. We great unwashed of the outer world, on the coasts of new continents, though we might ourselves have behaved a...
Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphe...
Through the ages, many different groups have called themselves victims. Some came through wars and massacres. Some were slaves or minorities. But the Jews, who have always been victimized throughout history, don’t see themselves as victims. We see ...
Animals hold us to what is present: to who we are at the time, not who we’ve been or how are bank accounts describe us. What’s obvious to an animal is not the embellishment that fattens our emotional resumes but what’s bedrock and current in us...
Our view of the mind not only shapes our view of ourselves; less obviously, it also shapes our view of that part of our experience we conceive of as dealing with the external world. As we learn about the structure of this aspect of experience, we fin...
We know a lot nowadays about how to extrapolate from rats to people, but we don't only have to rely on that. In a sense we've made ourselves into experimental animals. There are too many of us, too crowded, in an environment we've poisoned with our o...
It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to t...
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which...
Many of us have been burned by love and vowed to keep ourselves safe and not get pulled in again. But, inevitably, we do. Then we vow that this time, it's going to be different. This time, we're not going to make the same mistakes. And things seem wo...
For whatever reason, there are people we like and people we don't like. It's hard to say why, and often a difficult opinion to change. Luckily, there's no steadfast rule stating that we must like everyone. But to keep from disliking ourselves, we sho...
We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own ...
When we see everyone the way God sees them, all their frailties and weaknesses as well as their strengths,we can learn to treat them tenderly. We must also view ourselves from God's perspective: lovingly, tenderly, and patiently. We can do the same w...
