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Stephen Rowland
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Reading for the 2nd time
read in April 2020
Stephen Rowland said:
"
Absolutely essential for all profoundly unhappy thinking people. I will be quoting Pessoa to the end of my days, I'm sure of it.
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“It was enough for one Hindu prince to see a cripple, an old old man, and a corpse to understand everything; we see them and understand nothing, for nothing changes in our life. We cannot renounce anything; yet the evidences of vanity are in our reach. Invalids of hope, we are still waiting; and life is only the hypostatization of waiting. We wait for everything – even Nothingness – rather than be reduced to an eternal suspension, to a condition of neutral divinity, of a corpse. Thus the heart, which has made the Irreparable into an axiom, still hopes for surprises from it. Humanity lives in love with the events which deny it…”
― A Short History of Decay
― A Short History of Decay
“Whereas all beings have their place in nature, man remains a metaphysically straying creature, lost in Life, a stranger to the Creation.”
― A Short History of Decay
― A Short History of Decay
“If one were at every moment conscious of what one knew - if, for example, the sentiment of foundationlessness were both continual and intense - one would kill oneself or allow oneself to slip into imbecility. One exits thanks to the moments when one forgets certain truths.”
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“And this nothing, this everything, cannot give life a meaning, but it nonetheless makes life persevere in what it is: a state of non-suicide.”
― A Short History of Decay
― A Short History of Decay
Stone Bridge Press
— 60 members
— last activity Dec 03, 2025 08:00AM
Stone Bridge Press was established in Berkeley, California, in 1989. We now have some 150 titles in print, covering such Japan-related areas as langua ...more
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