Posts under ‘The Thinker’

What price, for the liberty of choice?
What price, of the liability of choice?
What cost, of a wrong choice?
Would we be better off without choices; 是福不是祸 是祸躲不过?

No matter the class, race, or culture. No matter the place, time, or situation. The capacity to feel loss, to fear death – perhaps not in itself, or that of oneself, but that of others, and other things – and to love. These are central to what it means to be human.
Sitting there in [...]

The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not… yet, I [...]

When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness. No powerful mind stops within itself: it is always stretching out and exceeding its capacities. It makes sorties which go beyond what it can achieve: it is only half-alive if it is not advancing, pressing forward, getting driven into a corner [...]

We cheat ourselves of what is rightly useful to us in order to conform our appearances to the common opinion. We are not so much concerned with what the actual nature of our being is within us, as with how it is perceived by the public. Even wisdom and the good things of the mind [...]

A realisation.
The more my emotions threaten to surface, the more I’d try to bottle them up.
These days, words, feelings… don’t come as easily as before.
It’s how I cope. I try to remain detached. At first, it takes some conscious effort. But now, I’m becoming effortlessly indifferent.
It’s been a while since I have attempted to re-settle [...]

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
~ Charles Dickens

Nostalgia can be a funny feeling. It’s joy mixed with longing, familiarity mixed with deploration. As I come to end of The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, I felt like begging Fortey to bring me back there one more time, once more to visit the warrens of hidden corridors beneath and behind the [...]