Katabasis Quotes

“Socrates was put to death for being annoying, Socrates's opinion doesn't count for anything.”
― RF Kuang

“If I die, I die,” said Alice. “But there’s no life otherwise, I think. Life is an activity that’s got to be sustained. You have to fight for it. Otherwise it’s no life at all. That’s just it. It’s just an impulse. And we’ve both determined that’s not enough. You know that.”
― R F Kuang

“Pindar said, neither by land nor by sea shall you find us. Maybe you will have to fly to discover us. Or slither under the earth. Perhaps a great subterranean tunnel – the Underworld – will bring you to us. You must go down before you can come up. Katabasis, the going down, precedes anabasis, the going up. By the same token, the advance is followed by the retreat, the march forward so often turns into the march back. Even great Alexander learned that. Does descent precede ascent, or ascent precede descent?”
― David Sinclair, The Church of the Serpent: The Philosophy of the Snake and Attaining Transcendent Knowledge

“Maslow emphasized the “heights”, but to get to the heights you must have the Dark Night of the soul, and make your trip to the Chapel Perilous. Katabasis means a going-down, a descent. It’s used to describe journeys to the underworld. Anabasis is its opposite, a going-up. You can only reach the spiritual heights if you have also known the spiritual depths.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“I don't fucking read while l wait for something to happen in here. Someone to come in. I have to sit now. Most times, I try hard to sober the fuck up. Whereas before, when I was younger and thinner, I would just get in and out. Seeing nothing going on meant I would find the place and my situation absolutely intolerable. I sickened myself quicker and quicker each time. And I knew all about the kinds of fat mouth slobs that would sit there and wait for someone like me to chew on.”
― Peter Sotos, 1. Obviates: Predicate, Show Adult

“A weak body was just the same thing as a weak mind; either might afflict you, and both disqualified you from genius." -- Katabasis”
― R F Kuang

“With angry sulking men, the secret was holding your ground. You didn't get rebellious, no—that was asking for a slap to the face. But you didn't self-flagellate, either. When you acted like you ought to be whipped, that only confirmed to them that you should. One should never cower. The secret rather was to keep talking as if you deserved no punishment at all, and then to distract them with something they wanted more than they wanted to hurt you.”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

“Socrates was put to death for being annoying, Socrates's opinion doesn't count for anything.”
― R. F. Kuang

“But this hurt, for she had thought they were anything but. And when at last the fact the matter sank in, that Peter did not wish to see her, and did not hold her in special regard, she could not wrap her mind around it. She could not understand how you could open your mind to someone so completely, for so long, and then slam it shut again.”
― R.F Kuang

“Fortunately graduate school had prepared her for this, the constant managing of despair. Everything was always falling apart; nothing in lab went right; you couldn't afford groceries, your cottage had a rat problem, all your instructors hated you, and you were always one step away from flushing all your life's work down the toilet.”
― R. F. Kuang

“There were no honest words, only puns and illusions and constructions of reality so convoluted that you couldn't keep track anymore of what was real and what wasn't. Everyone was always trying so hard to pretend they were somebody else. If only they had caught one another, looked at each other, forced their ways across the gap.”
― R. F. Kuang