Matthew Boylan

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Poèmes saturniens
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Dead Souls
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  (page 110 of 464)
Dec 24, 2025 08:01PM

 
Book cover for Essays and Aphorisms
IF the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and ...more
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Friedrich Nietzsche
“Against positivism, which halts at phenomena—"There are only facts"—I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Emil M. Cioran
“Doubt crashes down upon us like a calamity; far from choosing it, we fall into it. And try as we will to wrest ourselves from it, to conjure it away, doubt never loses sight of us, for it is not even true that doubt crashes down upon us, doubt was within us, and we were foredoomed to it. No one chooses the lack of choice nor strives to opt for the absence of option, for nothing that affects us deeply is willed.”
Emil M. Cioran, The Fall into Time

Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is not a matter of going ahead (—for then one is at best a herdsmen, i.e., the herds chief requirement), but of being able to go it alone, of being able to be different.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Cormac McCarthy
“When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned and every aberrancy embraced. It should be quite a spectacle. However brief.”
Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

Annie Dillard
“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

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