To perceive means to immobilize. . . we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

Henri Bergson: (1859-1941) French philosopher

The artist when he encounters the present, the contemporary artist is always seeking new patterns. New pattern recognition; which is his task, for heavens sake, his great need, the absolutely indispensability of the artist is that he alone in the encounter with the present can give the pattern recognition. He alone has the sensory awareness necessary to tell us what our world is made of. He is more important than the scientist. The scientists are going to wake up to this shortly and will be resorting on mass to the artist’s studio in order to discover the forms of the materials were dealing with.
~ Marshall McLuhun

Whenever a new environment forms around an old one, there’s always new terror.
~ Marshall McLuhun

To understand is to perceive patterns.
~ Isaiah Berlin

***

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.
~ Godfrey H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
~ Saying

***

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.~Louis Nizer

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions. . . . Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

Isaac Singer (1904 - 1991) Polish-US "novelist, short-story writer"
"In NY ""Times,"" 26 Nov 1978."

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set abut it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them.
~ George Spencer Brown, The Laws of Form. 1969.

My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.
~ Louisa May Alcott

***

Everything that I did in life that was worthwhile I caught hell for.

Earl Warren: (1891-1974) US politician, jurist

How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.~Soren Kirkegaard

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.~Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from Dune by Frank Herbert

The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.
~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open . . .
~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.
~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

For a spur of the moment thing, you came up with a fairly engaging sermon.
~ Roger Zelazny

***

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.

Dustin Hoffman: US actor

To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.~Thomas Merton (1915-1968), New Seeds Of Contemplation [1962]

I'm very 'spur of the moment'. I'm always trying to think of fun things to do to create a memory.
~ Josh Hartnett

I haven't really met anyone else who has influenced me, but you never know, it could happen next year or next month. I just like to go with the spur of the moment.
~ Robin Gibb

But we've all made spur-of-the-moment decisions that maybe we look back on and wish we hadn't made.
~ Scott Skiles

Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
~ Angela Carter

The gods too are fond of a joke.
~ Aristotle

***

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Archibald MacLeish, “We Have Purpose … We All Know It,” Life, May 30, 1960, p. 93.

This was one of a series of essays in Life magazine and The New York Times on “The National Purpose.”

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.~Wallace Stevens

If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to
be nothing more than one huge gallows.
~ Richard Brautigan

Indeed, unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw more from them as wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and bones.
- Henry Ward Beecher,
Star Papers--Oxford--Bodleian Library