“Men generally work too much to themselves, work is a curse which man has turned into pleasure, to work for work’s sake, to enjoy a fruitless endeavor, to imagine that you can fulfill yourself through assiduous labor – all that is disgusting and incomprehensible. Permanent and uninterrupted work dulls, trivializes and depersonalizes. Work displaces man’s center of interest from the subjective to the objective realm of things. In consequence, man no longer takes an interest in his own destiny but focuses on facts and things. What should be an activity of permanent transfiguration becomes a means of exteriorization, of abandoning one’s inner self , in himself through it, he makes things.”
- Excerpt From: On The Heights of Despair, by Emil Cioran
“The average age for a man in the Bronze Age was eighteen. In the Roman era, twenty-two. Heaven must have been beautiful then. Today it must look dreadful. When a man reaches forty, he has no chance to die beautifully. No matter how he tries, he will die of decay. He must compel himself to live.”
- From: A Life In Four Chapters, by Yukio Mishima
Those living in the Dublin area can visit the exhibition in the flesh at the National Library of Ireland.
Visit the NLI website for more information.
“One of the worst effects of haste, or of the fear engendered by it, is the apparent inability of modern man to spend even the shortest time alone. He anxiously avoids every possibility of self-communion or meditation, as though he feared that reflection might present him with a ghastly self-portrait, such as that Dorian Gray. The only explanation for the widespread addiction to noise – paradoxical considering how neurasthenic people are today – is that something has to be suppressed. One day, when my wife and i were walking in the woods, we were surprised to hear the rapidly approaching, metallic sounds of the transistor radio. as its owner, alone, sixteen-year old cyclist, came into view, my wife remarked,”He’s afraid of hearing the birds sing.” I think he was on afraid of meeting himself. Why, otherwise, do perfectly intelligent people prefer the inane advertisements on television to their own company? I am sure it s because it helps to dispel reflection.”
- Excerpt From : Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins – Man’s Race Against Himself p-28-29, by Konrad Lorenz
