Sublime
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That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century attitude. When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly, with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it,
... See moreRobert Pirsig • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 40th Anniversary Edition
Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is
... See moreRobert M. Pirsig • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
First, Ezra Pound’s parable of Agassiz, from his “ABC of Reading” (incidentally one of the most underrated books about literature). I’ve preserved his quirky formatting:
No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish:
A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to... See more
Nabeel S. Qureshi • How to Understand Things
He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.”
Robert M. Pirsig • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
All the time we are aware of millions of things around us—these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road—aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we
... See moreRobert M. Pirsig • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Shunryu Suzuki addressed the assembly, “Each one of you is perfect the way you are and you can use a little improvement.”
Barry Magid • Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide
When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory.