Eugene Marais, The Soul of the Ape (1935)

It was during the hour before sunset that games were indulged in with the utmost joyousness. Incessantly their happy "laughter" and shrieks of excitement and delight awoke the echoes of the great shadowy gorge, while the older fathers and mothers sat watching the activity.

With the setting of the sun and the first deepening of the shadows a singular transformation came over the entire scene. Silence fell upon them gradually. The "talking" ceased. The little ones crept cuddlingly into the protecting arms of their mothers. The romping young folk joined different groups, generally on the higher flat rocks from which a view could be had of the western horizon. The older ones assumed attitudes of profound dejection, and for long intervals the silence would be unbroken except for the soft whimpering complaints of the little ones and the consoling gurgling of the mothers. And then from all sides would come the sound of mourning, a sound never uttered otherwise than on occasions of great sorrow - of death or parting.

Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying (1651)

Death meets us everywhere, and is procured by every instrument and in all chances, and enters in at many doors; by violence and secret influence, by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and the meeting of a vapour, by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or an empty stomach, by watching at the wine or by watching at prayers, by the sun or the moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or sleeping days, by water frozen into the hardness and sharpness of a dagger, or water thawed into the floods of a river, by a hair or a raisin, by violent motion or sitting still, by severity or dissolution, by God's mercy or God's anger; by every thing in providence and every thing in manners; by every thing in nature and every thing in chance; eripitur persona, manet res; we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in the purchase; and the person is snatched away, and the goods remain.

Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814)

A useless war is the greatest offence that a government today can commit. It destroys every social guarantee without compensation; it jeopardizes every form of liberty; it injures every interest; it upsets every security; it weighs upon every fortune. It combines and legitimizes every kind of intemal and external tyranny. It introduces into judicial fonns a hastiness destructive both of their sanctity and of their purpose. It tends to represent all the men whom the agents of authority view with hostility as accomplices of the foreign enemy. It corrupts the rising generations; it divides the people into two parts, one of which despises the other and passes readily from contempt to injustice. It prepares future destructions by means of the past ones and purchases with the evils of the present the evils that are to come.

These are truths that cannot be repeated too often, since political authority, in its haughty disdain, treats them as paradoxes and despises them as mere commonplaces.

Laura Riding, The Telling (1967)

In philosophy, and wherever else intellects adventure, lifeless systems, to take the place of live thought, are borrowed from science with reckless hand now, that we may be rid of pain of mind and travail of soul in our engagements with the unknown. The time, in love with easy knowledge and fast knowledge, has created a new materialism to minister to the appetites of the intellect. Human things are broken up into unreal pieces by this hasty learning-lust, studied in their supposed particulars at scientific remove; and in their reality they are far less visible through science's glass than with the naked eye of human selfhood. The sciences that purport to treat of human things - the new scientific storyings of the social, the political, the racial or ethnic, and the psychic, nature of human beings - treat not of human things but mere things, things that make up the physical, or circumstantial, content of human life but are not of the stuff of humanity, have not the human essence in them.

D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917)

It may be that all the laws of energy, and all the properties of matter, and all the chemistry of all the colloids are as powerless to explain the body as they are impotent to comprehend the soul. For my part, I think it is not so. Of how it is that the soul informs the body, physical science teaches me nothing; and that living matter influences and is influenced by mind is a mystery without a clue. Consciousness is not explained to my comprehension by all the nerve-paths and neurones of the physiologist; nor do I ask of physics how goodness shines in one man's face, and evil betrays itself in another. But of the construction and growth and working of the body, as of all else that is of the earth earthy, physical science is, in my humble opinion, our only teacher and guide.

Georges Bernanos, The European Spirit and the World of Machines (1946)

The existence of totalitarian man, masterpiece of a soulless technology, will never be anything but an accident in the history of mankind; and this historical accident may even be the last one. Before attaining the imaginary paradise of universal comfort for perfected animals, totalitarian man will die of thirst while crossing a spiritual desert where there will be nothing to quench his thirst except the blood of his fellowmen. They will all drink the blood, they'll lap it up like dogs, because they have exhausted the sources of the living waters. They will die of thirst; they will chew the last clots of black blood, their ears glued to the soil so that, while dying, they may try to hear the sound of subterranean waters.

Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality (1839)

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the firmest and surest guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is inspired with it will assuredly injure no one, will wrong no one, will encroach on no one's rights; on the contrary, he will be lenient and patient with everyone, will forgive everyone, will help everyone as much as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice, philanthropy, and loving-kindness. On the other hand, if we attempt to say, "This man is virtuous but knows no compassion," or, "He is an unjust and malicious man yet he is very compassionate," the contradiction is obvious. Tastes differ, but I know of no finer prayer than the one which ends old Indian dramas (just as in former times English plays ended with a prayer for the King). It runs: "May all living beings remain free from pain."

Dig We Must

This site - aside from this introductory post - will simply be a collection of excerpts from other people's writings.

I'll be posting two kinds of quotes here: those that are personal favorites of mine, and those that I stumble upon and find interesting for one reason or another. Not everything posted here should be seen as a reflection of my personal opinions, many of which vary from day to day and are inconsequential in any case.

It's also entirely up to you whether the title of this virtual commonplace book should refer to what I've planted here, or to the pruning of thorny ideas that is popularly taken as evidence of progress. Either way, I borrowed it from a poem by Marianne Moore.

I'd like to add a good site-search engine at some point. If anyone has any hints, please drop me a line.

Happy hunting!