Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.
Never find fault with the absent.
Greater things are believed of those who are absent.
Never speak ill of an absent friend.
Achilles absent was Achilles still!
Among absent lovers, ardor always fares better.
Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent.
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit.
I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.
The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence.
Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.
The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.
or simply:
