I Loved Reading This Book
One of a dozen minus one that i feel like re-reading forever, on page 196, i just liked the first sentence in the section called FUTURE OF SKEPTICISM, so much that i had to share it here .....:)
Naivetè, optimism, generosity - we encounter them among botanists, specialists in the pure sciences, explorers, never among politicians, historians, or priests.
Here's how he continues - "Those in the first group do without their kind, those in the second make man the object of their activities or their investigations. We turn sour only in the vicinity of man. Those who devote their thoughts on him, examine him or try to help him, sooner or later come to despise him, hold him in horror. A psychologist if ever there was one, a priest is the most disabused human example, incapable by profession of putting the slightest trust in his fellow men; whence his knowing looks, his cunning, his phony kindness and his profound cynicism...."
on pages 202, 203 from a section called Crumbs of Melancholy this superb little 2 paragrapher .....
Ali! Ali! A dervish, having renounced dealings with all words except that one, never utters another, in any circumstance. This was the sole infraction he allowed himself of his regime of silence.
Prayer: a concession made to God, certain phrases, and all the complacency which they presume. Our dervish, immolating himself in the essential, sacrificed language, that symbol of appearance, every man who resorts to it turns away from the absolute, even if he mortifies himself elsewhere or subscribes to the enormities of faith. Every man a fortiori, every saint. Francis of Assisi was a chatterbox like his disciples, like his rivals. Only one thing matters, only one word. If we speak, it is because we have not found that thing, nor shall find it.
Prayer: a concession made to God, certain phrases, and all the complacency which they presume. Our dervish, immolating himself in the essential, sacrificed language, that symbol of appearance, every man who resorts to it turns away from the absolute, even if he mortifies himself elsewhere or subscribes to the enormities of faith. Every man a fortiori, every saint. Francis of Assisi was a chatterbox like his disciples, like his rivals. Only one thing matters, only one word. If we speak, it is because we have not found that thing, nor shall find it.
