aspects: of a person

Qu'est-ce que le moi?

Un homme qui se met à la fenêtre pour voir les passants, si je passe par là, puis-je dire qu'il s'est mis là pour me voir? Non; car il ne pense pas à moi en particulier. Mais celui qui aime quelqu'un à cause de sa beauté, l'aime-t-il? Non: car la petite vérole, qui tuera la beauté sans tuer la personne, fera qu'il ne l'aimera plus. Et si on m'aime pour mon jugement, pour ma mémoire, m'aime-t-on, moi? Non, car je puis perdre ces qualités sans me perdre moi-même.

Où est donc ce moi, s'il n'est ni dans le corps, ni dans l'âme? Et comment aimer le corps ou l'âme, sinon pour ces qualités, qui ne sont point ce qui fait le moi, puisqu'elles sont périssables? Car aimerait-on la substance de l'âme d'une personne abstraitement et quelques qualités qui y fussent? Cela ne se peut, et serait injuste. On n'aime donc jamais personne, mais seulement des qualités. Qu'on ne se moque donc plus de ceux qui se font honorer pour des charges ou des offices, car on n'aime personne que pour des qualités empruntées.

Blaise Pascal

What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

Andrea Barrett

She said there were two kinds of waiting: the waiting that consumes the mind and that which occurs somewhere below the surface of awareness. The latter is more bearable, but also more dangerous because it manifests itself in ways that are not at first definable as such. She then told me that over the period of the last winter she had finally realized that everything that she did or said — every activity — was either a variant of, or a substitute for, waiting and therefore had no relevance of its own.

Jane Urquhart

Unfortunately, many things have been omitted which should have been recorded in our journal; for though we made it a rule to set down all our experiences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to keep, for the important experience rarely allows us to remember such obligations, and so indifferent things get recorded, while that is frequently neglected. It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us.

Henry David Thoreau

If living is seeing, I'm holding my breath
In wonder - I wonder, What happens next?
A new world, a new day to see.

Björk