[for my memory]

“The heart is commonly reached not through reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. A conclusion is but an opinion; it is not a thing which is, but which we are ‘quite sure about’; and it has often been observed that we never say we are sure and certain without implying that we doubt…” —John Henry Newman in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Part I, Chapter 4

“for he who always expects only something ordinary has the advantage that the result seldom refutes his hope, but sometimes he is surprised by quite unexpected perfections.” Immanuel Kant in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, p. 92

“What a large part of mankind would neither have done out of an immediately arising impulse of good-heartedness, nor out of principles, happens often enough simply on account of external appearance out of a delusion very useful, although in itself very shallow—as if the judgment of others determined the worth of ourselves and our actions.” Immanuel Kant in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, p. 62

“She did not offer any explanations, and I did not ask for them. I simply did as I was told. This reminded me of several so-called art films I had seen in college. Movies like that never explained what was going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films’ ‘reality.’ That was one way of thought, one way to look at things, no doubt, but it felt strange for me, as a real, live human being, to enter such a world.” in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, p. 380

This entry was posted on April 20, 2009 and is filed under literature, quotations.