Quotes from old Notebooks #1

...the real success of any creative act is that it transcended reality not by bypassing it but by going through it.

-The Last Psychiatrist

Source: Frenzzgoa

If he wants to work on himself, he must destroy his peace. To have them both is in no way possible. A man must make a choice. But when choosing the result is very often deceit, that is to say, a man tries to deceive himself. In words he chooses work but in reality he does not want to lose his peace.

Such submission is the most difficult thing there can be for a man who thinks that he is capable of deciding anything.
-Ouspensky

Have patience, Candidate, as one who fears no failure, courts no success. Fix thy soul’s gaze upon the star whose ray thou art, the flaming star that shines within the lightless depths of ever-being.
-Blavatsky

How are we to know that the mind has become concentrated? Because the idea of time will vanish. The more time passes unnoticed the more concentrated we are... all time will have the tendency to come and stand in the one present. So the definition is given, when the past and present come and stand in one, the mind is said to be concentrated.
-Vivekananda

All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall.
-Ram Dass

Only, you see, everywhere in the world people are actuated by something else than truth.
-Basil Maine

So you have no reason to claim credit from anyone for those attentions, since you showed them not because you wanted someone else’s company but because you could not bear your own.
-Seneca

It would be superfluous to mention any more who, though seeming to others the happiest of mortals, themselves bore true witness against themselves by their expressed hatred of every action of their lives. Yet they did not change themselves or anyone else by these complaints, for after their explosion of words their feelings reverted to normal.
-Seneca

But learning how to live takes a whole life, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die. -Seneca
External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.
-Seneca

That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in  an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
-Bukowski

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It’s like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.
-Bukowski

It was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn’t much left you could depend on.
-Bukowski

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead.
-Bukowski

It’s the old question of “Yes life’s not real” but you see a beautiful woman or something you can’t get away from wanting because it is there in front of you.
-Kerouac

Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there’s nothing to be empty of.
-Kerouac