Lavinia

“Je ne connais rien de plus decisif pour l'intelligence de l'homme que l'amitié d'un femme vraiment supérieure.”
― Titu Maiorescu

“While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch as the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: “When the individual feels, the community reels”; or “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today,” or, as the crowning statement: “Everybody is happy nowadays.” Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“We are the mirror, as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste of eternity this minute.
We are pain and what cures pain.
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Soul of the world, no life, nor world remain,
no beautiful women and men longing.
Only this ancient love circling the holy black stone of nothing.
Where the lover is the loved, the horizon and everything within it.”
― Rumi

“Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains—except kill it.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving