Sehnsucht. The far-off in time or space can arouse our longing for the metaphysical Elsewhere. A lonely saguaro standing sentinel on a distant ridge . . . .
When I met him, I was young and he was younger. Now I am old and he is dead. This life is too dream-like to be real, and too real to be a dream.
He died in a hospital bed, not with his boots on. “This is funny,” are said to have been Doc Holliday’s last words.
A race is not run all at once, but step by step. So too in life: it is lived day by day, hour by hour. This is a comforting truth. Can you get through the next hour?
For my kind of life, she’s been the right kind of wife: tamquam alter idem.
It takes a spiritual being to affirm that spirit is nothing but an efflux of brain chemistry and that what is ultimately real is matter alone.
Can there be moral seriousness without some doctrine of immortality? Yes? Are you serious?
Given that we are ineluctably both truth-seekers and moral strivers, could the world in itself be ultimately unintelligible and purposeless? If it is then man is no microcosm but a cosmic joke.
The ultimate joke would a joke without a teller.
If might makes right, then there is no right. To say that might makes right is to say that the notion of right is illusory.
If it won’t matter tomorrow, how much does it matter today? If it won’t exist tomorrow, how much does it exist today? Does existence come in degrees?
Is salvation of individuality or from individuality? Christian versus Hindu views. If the former, it ought to involve a transformation into a higher individuality and not a mere perpetuation of the petty earthly self.
Some friendships ought to be left in the boneyard of memory where they belong. “Let sleeping dogs lie.” But if the friendship was rooted in something deep, fruitful re-awakening may be possible.