Hamzà Coh

“Stupidity is better
kept a secret
than displayed.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“يا من يرى ما في الضمير و يسمع * أنت المعدّ لكل ما يتوقع
يا من يرجّى للشدائد كلها * يا من اليه المشتكى و المفزع
يا من خزائن رزقه في قول كن * امنن فان الخير عندك أجمع
ما لي سوى فقري اليك وسيلة * و بالافتقار اليك فقري أدفع
ما لي سوى قرعي لبابك حيلة * فلئن طردت فأي باب أقرع
و من الذي أدعو و أهتف باسمه * ان كان فضلك عن فقير يمنع
حاشا لمجدك أن تقنِّط عاصيا * الفضل أجزل و المواهب أوسع
بالذل قد وافيت بابك عالما * ان التذلل عند بابك ينفع
وجعلت معتمدي عليك توكلا * و بسطت كفي سائلا أتضرّع
و بحق من أحببته و بعثته * و أجبت دعوة من به يتشفع
اجعل لنا من كل ضيق مخرجا * و الطف بنا يا من اليه المرجع
ثم الصلاة على النبي و آله * خير الخلائق شافع و مشفّع”
― محمد بن إدريس الشافعي, ديوان الإمام الشافعي

“Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilisation as such . . . I said civilisation, and not: culture. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great lovers of culture, as distinguished from, and opposed to, civilisation. Besides, the term culture leaves it undetermined what the thing is which is to be cultivated (blood and soil or the mind), whereas the term civilisation designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian.”
― Leo Strauss