“Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, I went there ---China, India, the Pacific, Albania-- and it wasn t like that. I say, Because I am not you.”
“The Book revealed to Muhammad is one and unique of its kind. It has left indelible impression on the hearts of humanity. Nothing can overcome its majesty. The Quran has given new dimensions to human thinking - Surprising reforms, stunning success! The power that created in Muslims a ravenous appetite for knowledge sprung from the Quran.”
“Regret for not learning; not for the mistakes you did.”
“Can you hold happiness? Can you drink it? Can you taste it? Can you touch it? Of course not, it is immaterial. So, stop looking for it in the material world! Happiness is experienced within; when we bridge the gap between what we want to experience and how we choose to behave.”
“Polarities of the authentic vs. the inauthentic are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by which the self allows or disallows its own experience.”
“A bitter experience makes us a better person.”
“What does one do with experience? Do we react negatively, or do we (pro)create from the space of positivity?”
“Time and suffering are inseperable. In life, as in physics, both are the common denominator of all experiences.”
“Stop focusing on what you don’t want; it’s a tremendous waste of time and energy. Instead, start focusing on what you do want. This is the only way to create a plan of action which will enable you to experience the life you envision.”
“Experience is the best teacher.”
“La falta de experiencia es inevitable, si leo a Joyce estoy sacrificando automáticamente otro libro y viceversa, etc.”
“Laziness always wins.”
“It is the character of lived experience I want to explore, not the nature of man.”
“Spirituality is the poetry of our experience. Science is the gauge of our reality. Together, they create the essence of our humanity.”
“I was going to dine at the television company’s expense with one of the most beautiful women in show business and some television producer with an inferiority complex. In my experience, there’s always a price.”
“Adults, in their dealing with children, are insane, he [Ed Ricketts] said. And children know it too. Adults lay down rules they would not think of following, speak truths they do not believe. And yet they expect children to obey the rules, believe the truths, and admire and respect their parents for this nonsense. Children must be very wise and secret to tolerate adults at all. And the greatest nonsense of all that adults expect children to believe is that people learn by experience. No greater lie was ever revered. And its falseness is immediately discerned by children since their parents obviously have not learned anything by experience. Far from learning, adults simply become set in a maze of prejudices and dreams and sets of rules whose origins they do not know and would not dare inspect for fear the whole structure might topple over on them. I think children instinctively know this, Ed said. Intelligent children learn to conceal their knowledge and keep free of this howling mania.”
“My conduct with my friends is motivated: each being is, I believe, incapable on his own, of going to the end of being. If he tries, he is submerged within a private being which has meaning only for himself. Now there is no meaning for a lone individual: bing alone would of itself reject the private being if it saw it as such (if I wish my life to have meaning for me, it is necessary that it have meaning for others: no one would dare give to life a meaning which he alone would perceive, from which life in its entirety would escape, except within himself). At the extreme limit of the possible , it is true, there is nonsense . . . but only of that which had a prior sense: this is fulguration, even apotheosis of nonsense. But I don t attain the extreme limit on my own and, in actual fact, I can t believe the extreme limit attained, for I never remain there. If I had to be the only one having attained it (assuming that I had . . .), it would be as thought it had not occurred. For if there subsisted a satisfaction, as small as I can imagine it to be, it would distance me as much from the extreme limit. I cannot for a moment cease to incite myself to attain the extreme limit, and cannot make a distinction between myself and those with whom I desire to communicate. ~George Bataille, Inner Experience pg. 42”