-But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
Alan LightmanRead
Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the nature of existence and the burdens individuals carry throughout their lives.
Alan Lightman explores the concept of immortality and the inherent struggles of human existence. He suggests that to achieve true freedom, one must confront and perhaps embrace death, as it liberates individuals from the constraints of their past experiences and future expectations, highlighting the profound connection between life, death, and personal liberation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life.
-But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice, will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.
In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
While you are alive, your worldly self is like a collector of benefits from Allah's bounties, which come to you from myriads of hands.
One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
Any relationship between a building and its users is one of violence, for any use means the intrusion of a human body into a given space, the intrusion of one order into another.
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
Way back in the 1970s, I was eating a steak, and I looked down, and for the first time it suddenly looked like flesh to me - like a dead creature. In a flash, I realized that every time I ate any kind of meat, something had been killed for me, and I stopped eating all animals, not just cows and pigs but chickens and fish.
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