words and space, selected and arranged
1. Life is a tragedy: everyone dies at the end.
2. The pain of despair may be compared to the discomfort of dilated pupils: too much light. When emerging from the dark, any reasonable person would simply allow his eyes to adjust; who would immediately exclaim that he was happier with the lights out?
3. If all that's physically pleasant doesn't lead to physical health, why should we assume the psychologically pleasant defines mental health?
4. Positive and negative thoughts? Positive and negative feelings? We long for a home, so we store our most valued possessions on the real number line.
5. Loneliness is not the wail of a solitary man, but the echo of that wail.
6. Are we so weary of life that cheerfulness has become an ethic?--a defensive mechanism against reality?
7. The business of philosophy is to apologize for life. But why do the living feel so damn guilty?
8. A positive mental attitude is symptomatic of an anaesthetized rational instinct. Ever seen a benign smile on stupidity?
9. Why should anyone be offended by an observation about the world? For if the observation is false, it merely requires further investigation. And if the truth offends, one should direct criticism inward rather than toward the offender.
10. The free thinker never defends a position; he seeks truth, which requires no defense.
11. We're more inclined to unquestioningly accept the activity of listening to music than that of philosophical study, for philosophy imposes itself on us through its greater pretense of utility.
12. Historically, as soon as an academic discipline began to show progress (e.g. physics, biology, psychology), it became a science, thereby breaking with its parent, philosophy. Thus the popular conception of the philosopher as a wrestler with the unthinkable.
13. A clock may initially keep excellent time. Eventually, the wear of years and decades will cause it to become inaccurate--so that it's no longer essentially a clock. So runs the life of a philosopher.
14. In the entire history of philosophy, almost no one has put forth thinking as a way of life. Rather, they offer responses to potential thought as a doctor issues prescriptions for an illness.