Tao Te Ching

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Adam Kirsch

1976 CE –

A poet, literary critic, and professor; Kirsch wrote—and continues to write—many books, articles and reviews. His articles quickly go beyond cliché and challenge second and third thoughts about status quo opinion. His numerous and insightful New Yorker articles quickly come up with online searches.

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The New Yorker

Quotes by Adam Kirsch (12 quotes)

“the complete integrity of Hesse’s self-absorption is what guarantees the permanence of his work. As long as people struggle with the need to be themselves, and the difficulty of doing so, he will be a living presence—which is even better, perhaps, than being a great writer”

from The New Yorker

Themes: True Self

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“Old age did not put an end to Goethe’s career as a lover: in 1821, when he was seventy-two, the widowed Goethe fell in love with a seventeen-year-old girl he met at a spa resort, and even proposed marriage. (She sensibly declined.)... At the age of eighty-two, dying of a painful heart condition, Goethe’s last words were 'More light!'... it is Goethe’s last perfect metaphor: one final plea for illumination, from a writer who had spent all his life seeking it.”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Old Age

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“it might seem that the important part of the Jewish story had ended with the Bible, leaving only a long sequel of passive suffering... the Jews had possessed none of the things that made for the usual history of a nation: territory, sovereignty, power, armies, kings. Instead, the noteworthy events in Jewish history were expulsions... Perhaps this constant evolution of the meaning of Jewish history is, in fact, its truest meaning.... full understanding is only possible when a historical phenomenon is concluded, when it has become part of the past. But Jewish history, after three thousand years and against all the odds, is still very much a work in progress.”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Judaism

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“The flood of Wells’s prose lifted him from the respectable poverty in which he was raised to wealth and international fame... The problem he set himself was how to combine that mission, his furious devotion to human progress, with a cool certainty that the end of all progress would be entropy, devolution, nullity. The way he lived this paradox, even more than his books, is what makes Wells, still, an exemplary modern man.”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Paradox

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“The image of James taking a bow to the jeers and catcalls of the audience has become one of the primal scenes of modernism, and James is revered as the Master partly because of his willingness to wager everything—popularity, fortune, happiness, life—on his vision of artistic perfection”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“In all his writing, he ranged himself on the side of freedom—political, social, personal. But the surest sign of his genius was the paradoxical way in which he imagined a metaphysical freedom... for Tagore, it was life that meant confinement in subjectivity, while death was liberation into the free play of being.”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Freedom

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“The captain of a low-life odyssey, Bukowski accomplished something rare: he produced a large, completely distinctive, widely beloved body of work... Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.”

from The New Yorker

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“Keats is not content to give either of these competing drives a simple victory. He does not say that beauty is defeated by the inevitability of death, or that death is an illusion that beauty’s radiance can dispel. Instead, the poems are a series of sustained balances... To be defeated by sorrow, in this poem, is to triumph over it. The poet’s reward is no longer to collect a trophy from posterity but to become a trophy himself—as though his suffering and his pleasure were an offering to the gods.”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Middle Way

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“Like Jesus, whom he blasphemed, admired, and at times resembled, Shelley would take no thought for the morrow. He stood to lose personally from the social revolution he preached... Unlike the average radical, then, Shelley didn’t just challenge social taboos; he openly violated them, living his personal life in accordance with unpopular principles like equality, women’s rights, and free love. As a result, he became so reviled in England that he had to emigrate”

from The New Yorker

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“Has there ever been a great poet as tempting to laugh at as William Wordsworth? The tradition of mocking him is as old as the tradition of revering him... His downfall was that, convinced as he was of the truths that blossomed from his experience, he finally could not imagine that other people might need convincing... But the intrepidity with which Wordsworth explored his own inner life and the generosity with which he shared it remain more than convincing: even now, they continue to define the highest aspirations of modern poetry.”

from The New Yorker

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“His words sound like the utterance of a Zen master contemplating a koan, and, indeed, Buber had long been fascinated by Taoism and Buddhism. The best way to understand Buber, ultimately, may be not as a thinker but as a seeker—a religious type that became common in the twentieth century, as many Europeans and Americans turned to Eastern faiths or modern ideologies in their search for meaning.”

from The New Yorker

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“It was Moses who turned being Jewish into a way of life, involving everything from ethical behavior (thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal) to inscrutable rituals and taboos (thou shalt not wear a garment made of mixed linen and wool).”

from The New Yorker

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