Der Herbsttag by Johann Heinrich Voss

youtu.be/luUCgQ84sO4

"It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play"

Al Stewart

“Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape.”

“All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar’s teeth”

Antonyn Artaud

"A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn’t had an audience, and lines to speak?

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.

Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.

Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.

Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it’s also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them."

Jean Genet

Life’s Ironies as Alchemy for transformation

Shield not heart, mind and soul

from inherent ironic incongruities

by nurturing creative solutions

letting the tree of life

branch and blossom

directly to the light.

~ namasté,

Leah Spence

Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me.

Travis Bickle

a taxi driver from the movie of the same name

"I am a sick man … …

It is impossible for an intelligent man to become anything, only fools become something. …

To be overly conscious is a sickness. …

The pleasure lay precisely in the vivid consciousness of one’s own humiliation.

Dostoevsky, ’ Letters from underground’

You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.” …

“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way."

Tristan Tzara

“Dawn was breaking, like the light from another world.” …

“It is one of the great joys of home ownership to fire a pistol in one’s own bedroom” …

“It is conventional to call ‘‘monster’’ any blending of dissonant elements. …

“That’s a beautiful speech, but nobody’s listening."

Alfred Jarry

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

Abbie hoffman

Wikiquote

Paul Erdős

Hungarian mathematician (1913–1996)
Language

Paul Erdős [also Erdős Pál, Pál Erdős, Erdos or Erdös] (26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric mathematician who, with hundreds of collaborators, worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory.

My brain is open!
Quotes Edit

If numbers aren’t beautiful, I don’t know what is.

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

This one’s from the Book!

We’ll continue tomorrow — if I live.

What is the purpose of Life? — Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF’s score low.
I’m not competent to judge. But no doubt he was a great man.

Response to a question by an agent of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1954 as to what he thought of Karl Marx, often cited as an indication of his detachment from political sensibilities and the situations of the McCarthy era. He was afterwards denied a return visa for re-entering the US until 1959, after attending the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam; as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 128

Another roof, another proof.
His motto, as he roamed about the world, as the guest of other mathematicians, as quoted in A Tribute to Paul Erdős (1990) edited by Alan Baker, Béla Bollobás, A. Hajnal, Preface, p. ix
Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year’s time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue five. We could marshal the world’s best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.
As quoted in “Ramsey Theory” by Ronald L. Graham and Joel H. Spencer, in Scientific American (July 1990), p. 112-117

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

As quoted in Comic Sections : The Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit, and Wisdom (1993) by Des MacHale

The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.
SF was an abbreviation for “Supreme Fascist” — the term Erdős often used to refer to God, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 4
Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance.
Referring to a famous statement by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that “Property is theft!”, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 7
My brain is open!

A standard greeting he would make when he was not contemplating some mathematical problem, as quoted in My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 10

If numbers aren’t beautiful, I don’t know what is.
Frequent remark, as quoted in My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 14

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 99
Végre nem butulok tovább

Finally I am becoming stupider no more.
A suggestion for his own epitaph, as quoted in Variety in Religion and Science: Daily Reflections (2005) by Varadaraja Raman, p. 256

We’ll continue tomorrow — if I live.
Common remark when breaking off work for the night, as quoted in “The Magician of Budapest”
in The Edge of the Universe : Celebrating Ten Years of Math Horizons (2007) by Deanna Haunsperger and Stephen Kennedy, p. 111

This one’s from the Book!
Said in regard to any particularly beautiful or elegant proof, referring to a mythical “book” in which God wrote the proofs for all theorems, as quoted in Philosophy of Mathematics (2008) by John Francis, p. 51

SF means Supreme Fascist — this would show that God is bad. I don’t claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke. … As a joke I said, “What is the purpose of Life?” “Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF’s score low.”

Now, the game with the SF is defined as follows:
If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points.
If you don’t do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point.
And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point.

And the aim is to keep the SF’s score low.
Paul Erdős - SF means Supreme Fascist

MisattributedEdit

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers. ~ A paraphrase of a fictional anecdote created by Carl Pomerance

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.
Referencing Albert Einstein’s famous remark that “God does not play dice with the universe”, this is attributed to Erdős in “Mathematics : Homage to an Itinerant Master” by D. Mackenzie, in Science 275:759 (1997), but has also been stated to be a comment originating in a talk given by Carl Pomerance on the Erdős-Kac theorem, in San Diego in January 1997, a few months after Erdős’s death.
Confirmation of this by Pomerance is reported in a statement posted to the School of Engineering, Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Exeter, where he states it was a paraphrase of something he imagined Erdős and Mark Kac might have said, and presented in a slide-show, which subsequently became reported in a newspaper as a genuine quote of Erdős the next day. In his slide show he had them both reply to Einstein’s assertion: “Maybe so, but something is going on with the primes.”

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Widely attributed to Erdős, this actually originates with Alfréd Rényi, according to My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 155
Variant: A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

The first sign of senility is that a man forgets his theorems, the second sign is that he forgets to zip up, the third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

Though Erdős used this remark, it is said to have originated with his friend Stanisław Ulam, as reported in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman
Variants:

The first sign of senility is when a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is when he forgets to zip up. The third sign is when he forgets to zip down.

As quoted in Wonders of Numbers : Adventures in Mathematics, Mind, and Meaning (2002) by Clifford A. Pickover, p. 64

There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

The Raven Quotes

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”— here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” —
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

"Nevermore.

Leave my loneliness unbroken

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore…

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more.

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee–by these angels he hath sent thee–
Respite–respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” —
Merely this, and nothing more

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.

Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?–tell me–tell me, I implore!
Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.

Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Literature is news that stays news.
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.
The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.

The curse of me & my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight

No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job.“”

Ezra Pound

"Friends are not made, but recognized.

At the time, there were very few foreign names in the press and they were all factory workers. I

thought I’d never get a job at a university with a foreign name.

I fell in love with social work, and that was my undoing as a poet.

Carl Rakosi

Aristophenes

“The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.” ― Aristophanes, Birds. …

The bees are a different kinds of ’ birds of a feather’ in a manner of speaking:

Meno
Plato

Sections 70 - 80

Socrates’ discussion with Meno begins as Meno asks whether virtue can be taught. Meno suggests that it may be a result of practice or an inherent trait. Socrates answers by reminding Meno that Meno’s own countrymen, the Thessalians, have recently gained a reputation for wisdom, due chiefly to the rising fame of Gorgias (a Sophist teacher). Gorgias, Socrates says, has taught people “to give a bold and grand answer to any question you may be asked, as experts are likely to do.”

Athenians, on the other hand, do not claim to be able to answer such questions, says Socrates, noting that he himself is certainly among the ignorant. We should note that Socrates’ modesty here is somewhat false, at least in the context of the dialogue that is to follow. For Socrates (and for Plato), it is much better to know that one does not know than “boldly and grandly” to claim knowledge when one is in fact ignorant. Thus, Socrates’ modesty simply sets up Meno, the Thessalians, Gorgias, and the Sophists in general for a fall later on in the elenchus.

Socrates adds to his admission of ignorance the statement that he has not yet met anyone who knows what virtue is (though he qualifies this statement with regard to Gorgias, claiming not to remember his meeting with him clearly). This claim astonishes Meno, who moves quickly, at Socrates’ behest, to give a definition of virtue. Meno says that there are different virtues for men (managing public affairs, helping friends, harming enemies, and protecting oneself), for women (managing the home, protecting possessions, and being submissive to one’s husband), and for children, slaves, the elderly, and so on.

This, of course, is not a definition but a list of different kinds of virtue. Socrates points this error out with a metaphor about Meno’s “swarm” of virtues being like a swarm of bees. The bees differ in size and shape, but “do not differ from one and other in being bees.” In other words, Socrates is after the definitive characteristics of virtue in general, the “form” (eidos) of virtue. This idea of forms, which suggests that there is an ideal, non-physical model for each kind of thing, will eventually play a major role in Plato’s dialogues. Here, the term is used sparingly, and Plato seems to be thinking of forms as somehow inherent in each physical thing rather than as separated in some mental or divine realm.

In addition to the bees metaphor, Socrates also uses qualities like health and strength to show Meno that he is asking after the single form common to all kinds of virtue (strength in a man, for example, is the same thing as it is in a woman, regardless of how much of it is present).

Meno, however, is still somewhat unsure what Socrates is getting at. This persistent confusion should remind us of the originality of Socrates’ and Plato’s thought at the time (ideas that are now commonplace to us). The idea that the term “virtue” must refer to one thing in all of its individual examples (i.e., the idea of a definition) is quite different from the ancient Greek conception of virtue as various kinds of success in worldly affairs.

Socrates reminds Meno that no virtuous quality is any good without “moderation and justice.” Meno agrees, and Socrates points out that this idea gets at something common to all cases of virtue. Meno seems to understand this and makes a second attempt to define virtue: “What else” is it, he asks, but “to be able to rule over people?”

This definition is immediately thrown out, however, as Socrates reminds Meno that ruling over others is not virtuous in slaves or children. In any case, Socrates asks, shouldn’t Meno have added “justly and not unjustly” to the phrase “ruling over people?” Meno agrees, noting that “justice is virtue.” Socrates takes that statement as an opportunity to make a further point about definitions: does Meno mean that justice is virtue or that it is a virtue?

Meno, however, still fails to grasp this distinction between instances of virtue and the definition of virtue, and Socrates must use another example. Roundness, he notes, is a shape, but is not shape itself. Meno again seems to grasp the difference, and clarifies his statement about justice: it is a virtue, not virtue itself. “There are many other virtues,” he says, and he goes on to list some of them (“courage…moderation, wisdom, and munificence, and very many others”).

This third attempt by Meno to define virtue contains, of course, the same mistake as his first attempt. Socrates notes that they have again “found many virtues while looking for one.” Meno again professes confusion, and Socrates again resorts to the example of “a shape” versus “shape” in general. He also mentions color in the same regard.

Meno, however, simply asks Socrates to answer his own question and define “shape” and “color” himself, so that Meno will have an example to follow in defining virtue. This turning of the tables, in which Socrates’ interlocutor asks him the questions, is a relatively rare occurrence in Plato’s dialogues. Here, it serves to give Plato the opportunity to contrast Socrates’ style of definition with that of the Sophists.

Socrates, after making sure that Meno knows the geometrical terms “limit” and “solid,” defines shape as “that which limits a solid; in a word, a shape is the limit of a solid.” Then, after chastising Meno for ordering him around, Socrates proceeds to define color “after the manner of Gorgias” (rather than after his own manner, in which he defined shape). He mentions Empedocles’ concept of effluvia, those elements that travel into us via our sense organs and allow us to sense the external world. Using this concept, and quoting Pindar along the way, Socrates defines color as “an effluvium from shapes which fits the sight and is perceived.” The main contrast highlighted here is between Socrates’ simple, direct account and the “theatrical” accounts of Gorgias and the Sophists (which are full of high-flown theories and quotations).

In return for these definitions, Meno makes a fourth attempt at defining virtue: using a literary quote (in true Sophist style), he says that virtue is “to desire beautiful things and and have the power to acquire them.” Like his idea about virtue as the power to rule, however, this definition is quickly broken down by Socrates’ questions. Socrates points out that some men desire bad things, and further that they do not know these things to be bad (since no one desires what will harm them). “What else is being miserable,” he asks, “but to desire bad things and secure them [for oneself]?”

Meno’s most recent definition, then, amounts to virtue as “the power of securing good things.” Even this is not enough for Socrates, however, who points out that the acquisition of good things is only good if it is done “justly and piously” (otherwise such acquisition is “wickedness”).

But now Socrates and Meno are back to square one, having stumbled into another error with regard to the nature of a definition. If virtue is to acquire good things justly, and if justice is a kind of virtue, Meno has simply repeated his earlier mistake of using kinds of virtue to define virtue itself. This mistake, however, is slightly different from the earlier mistake in which Meno defined the thing simply by listing its instances. Here, Plato is also showing us that a definition cannot contain the term to be defined–one cannot give a definition of virtue as “virtue” or as “that which is a part of virtue.”

Meno, at the end of his rope, calls Socrates a torpedo fish (a fish that numbs whatever touches it). “Both my mind and my tongue are numb,” he says. Though he has “made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions…now [he] cannot even say what it is.” This state of coming to know that one does not know is typical of Socrates’ method in Plato’s dialogues, and is known as aporia.

Meno

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What’s small, buzzes here and there and visits flowers?

If you said bees or hummingbirds, you got it. And you wouldn’t be the first if you mixed the two up. In Medieval Europe, some called bees the smallest birds. In Chinese and Japanese, the words for hummingbird translate into “bee bird.” Today we call the smallest hummingbird — weighing less than a penny and only a bit larger than the biggest bee — the bee hummingbird.

"To sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Lord, it is time. Let the great summer go,
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
And over harvest piles let the winds blow.

So for me it is forlorn to dwell
Within my house the world has gone,
No garden flowers are left to tell
Of summer in my garden, and
No song on autumn wind to swell.

A life without you, is only pain.
With you, the heart is full of fire,
The spirit shines bright as a grain field,
Within the summer’s fire, your smile
Grows brighter still, with every year.

And oh, the day will come, when in your life
All the pain of days, of years to come
Will disappear, and in the golden sun
Your spirit like the summer bloom,
Will burst and soar to the highest wing.

Only a God could suffer that—for an
angel is a reflection in still water, a fleeting
breath of love, a prayer, a dream, and then the
same thing all over again, in still water. And God
is love, and nothing else. God is love—and the
desire to escape love.

Yeates:

"You see a tree…

“The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.”

“The secret behind humor is not joy but sorrow”

Mark Twain

“Go let go of your illusions and still exist but you will no longer live.”

Van Kilmer as mark twain

" come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish - no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears. Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe. Deity -

Author: Rabindranath Tagore