Monday, June 22, 2015

reduce to settled order the wandering motions in ourselves

"The god invented and gave us vision in order that we might observe the circuits of intelligence in the heaven and profit by them for the revolutions of our own thought, which are akin to them, though ours be troubled and they are unperturbed; and that, by learning to know them and acquiring the power to compute them rightly according to nature, we might reproduce the perfectly unerring revolutions of the god and reduce to settled order the wandering motions in ourselves." - Timaeus in Plato's Timaeus

Without the eyeball, there is no philosophy!

Sunday, June 14, 2015

the mask be torn away

"Yes, it is better to watch a man in doubt
and danger, see what he is when all's gone wrong;
for only then will truth come from the heart,
the mask be torn away, the man remain."

[Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III, Lines 55-58]

all things slowly weaken and fall to ruin

"The aged plowman sighs and shakes his head
again and again -- all that work gone for naught! --
compares the present times with times gone by,
and often remarks how lucky his father was.
Discouraged, the vintner tends his tattered vines,
curses the weather, and prays till heaven is tired;
he growls of an age long gone, when men were good,
and found life easy though their world was small,
and the land that each man held was then far less.
He does not see that all things slowly weaken
and fall to ruin, worn out by ages past."

[Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book II, Lines 1164-1174]

Monday, June 08, 2015

in each sister and brother

If God comes down to earth through [the] Son made flesh, then we ascend toward heaven through Jesus present in each sister and brother for ...