Quips and Quotes

Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your respon

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“Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.”

“Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.”

―

John Berger

The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.

This catastrophe perfectly encapsulates the French psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni’s formulation of Verleugnung (disavowal): ‘I know very well, but nevertheless’,