Philbro

“When in a fight to the death, one wants to employ all one's weapons to the utmost. I must say that to die with one's sword still sheathed is most regrettable.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“living only for the moment, savouring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting oneself in simply floating, unconcerned by the prospect of imminent poverty, buoyant and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the current of the river...”
― Asai Ryoi, Tales of the Floating World

“Linguistic communication is wholly dependent on the prior idiosyncratic manners in which its speakers and hearers have previously come to grasp the contingent world patterns to which words dumbly point. The link that conveys something of the contents of the world through a speaker’s linguistic token and on to a hearer’s understanding is wholly indirect, passing mandatorily through whatever has been separately understood by speaker and hearer of the structure of the world itself. This might be put by saying that a pragmatic understanding of language goes absolutely all the way down. There is no such thing as mere linguistic understanding. Understanding language is buried in understanding the world as a whole.”
― Ruth Millikan

“Affects tell long evolutionary stories of which we are completely unaware.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness