I wondered no more, and wondered at the caprice of nature, and of he who governs nature.
“Trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves. Which was that translation was impossible. That the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known. That the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception. For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language. There was no candidate - not English, not French - that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation, a necessary endeavor however futile, to move between them.”
― Babel
― Babel
“It’s not the life I used to imagine for myself either. But it’s the life I have, the only one.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― Babel
― Babel
“The deepest reason for this is, and what is essential to human existence, that the human being is individuum and, as such, at one and the same time itself and the whole human race, so that the whole race participates in the individual and the individual in the whole race.”
― The Kierkegaard Collection
― The Kierkegaard Collection
“All these people are suffering without the tools to end their own suffering. And we who have the tools refuse to do anything about it because the people who take action are criticized? Oh, that's all very well, but then, what action do I ever take? In my defense, I'm very tired, and I don't have any good ideas.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
Cole’s 2025 Year in Books
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