Category: TRANSCIENCE

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • If, as we grow older, we scrutinize our own past at the expense of “problems,” it is simply because we handle memories more readily than ideas.

    The Trouble With Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me,

    The Trouble With Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

    Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
    Anne Lamott

  • Everything had left her—the innocence, the crying, the dutiful outings with her father, the life she had never lived. All these weigh something.

    Light Years
    James Salter

  • Because I am thinking so much about the past these days I have come to see that the past is always changing, is never static, never “placed” forever like a book on a shelf. As we grow and change, we understand things and the people who have influenced us in new ways.

    The House by the Sea: A Journal
    May Sarton

  • It’s not that I want to die myself, Heaven knows, but the basic pattern of a life changes radically when there is no one left, for instance, who remembers one as a child.

    The House by the Sea: A Journal
    May Sarton

  • When I was young death was a romantic dream, longed for at times of great emotional stress as one longs for sleep. Who could fear it? one asked at nineteen. We fear what we cannot imagine. There is simply no way of imagining what has not yet happened nor been described. We live toward it, not knowing … except that intense love of life has to be matched by greater detachment as one grows older.

    The House by the Sea: A Journal
    May Sarton

  • Do you not know that the present life is a sojourn in a far country? For are you a citizen? Nay you are a wayfarer. Do you understand what I say? You are not a citizen, but you are a wayfarer and a traveler. Say not: I have this city and that. No one has a city. The city is above. The present life is but a journey. We are journeying on every day, while nature is running its course. There are some who store up goods on the way, and some who bury jewelry on the road. Now when you enter an inn do you beautify the inn? No, you eat and drink and hasten to depart. The present lite is an inn: we have entered it, and we bring the present life to a close. Let us be eager to depart with a good hope, let us leave nothing here, that we may not lose it there. When you enter the inn, what do you say to the serv-ant? Take care where you put away our things, that you do not leave anything behind here, that nothing may be lost, not even what is small and trifling, in order that we may carry everything back to our home. You are a wayfarer and traveler, and indeed more insignificant than the wayfarer. How so? I will tell you.

    The wayfarer knows when he is going into the inn, and when he is going out; for the coming as well as the going is in his own power. But when I enter the inn, that is to say this present life, I know not when I shall go out. And it may be that I am providing myself storehouses with sustenance for a long time when the Master suddenly summons me saying,

    “You fool, for whom shall those things be which you have prepared? For on this very night they are taking your soul from you” (Lk. 12:20). The time of your departure is uncertain, the tenure of your possessions insecure, there are innumerable precipices, and billows on every side of you. Why do you rave about shadows? Why desert the reality and run after shadows?

    I say these things, and shall not cease saying them, causing continual pain and dressing the wounds. And this is done not for the sake of the fallen, but of those who are still stand-ing. For they have departed, and their career is ended, but those who are yet standing have gained a more secure position through their calamities. What then, you say, shall we do? Do one thing only, hate riches, and love your life—cast away your goods; I do not say all of them, but cut off the superfluities. Be not covetous of other men’s goods, strip not the widow, plunder not the orphan, seize not his house. I do not address myself to persons but to facts. But if any one’s conscience attacks him, he himself is responsible for it, not my words.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches