Steven

“Before the army's watering hole has
been reached, the commander does not speak of thirst; before the fires
have food on them, the commander does not speak of hunger.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Hence, given the right nourishment there is nothing that will not grow, and deprived of it there is nothing that will not wither away.”
― Mencius, Mencius

“First post-historical corollary: The letter is nothing but the spirit. Among the experimental practices that nihilism, an astute rhetorician, has tried to put into operation in its theater, the first and main one is esotericism. A chilling oxymoron has thus been created, one that grips our whole life. Appearance having now been dissolved as referring to another, what one gets is unremitting tautology, the repetition of divine names, a constant exchange of incorruptible mystical commodities, whether they be words, bodies, images, phantasms, or objects. Seen from a distance, this dizzying circulation produces an effect of static hypnosis, a miserable condition of demigods who would like to die but cannot.”
― Roberto Calasso, The Forty-Nine Steps

“The Master said, To prefer it is better than to only know it. To delight in it is better than to merely prefer it.”
― Confucius, The Analects