“I estrange them all. They come towards me, uninvited, bygones bygones, full of kindness, anxious to help… (the voice breaks)… Genuinely pleased… To see me again… Looking so well…(handkerchief.) A few simple words… From my heart… And I am all alone… Once more…”
-Samuel Beckett, “All That Fall”
“It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us more violently than those of what is agreeable and yet leave less knowledge as residue of the shock: sickness makes the rougher mark, but health, tranquilly present, explains itself better; it takes the first place, it is the natural thing, it belongs to our being; illness is alien, unnatural, and thus makes itself felt by its very incongruity, while the other conditions are native and we take no notice. Such being our nature, we are most completely aware of ourselves when we are most completely identified with the object of our knowledge.”
-Plotinus, “Ennead V, Eighth Tractate”
“What do you feel in the presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of Souls? When you see that you yourselves are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your soul, this longing to break away from the body and live sunken within the veritable self?”
-Plotinus, “Ennead I, Sixth Tractate”
