Virtue

To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue... [They are] gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Wuyi Woods

Zilu, Zengxi, Ran Qiu and Gongxi Hua were sitting together one day and Confucious said, ‘Do not think that I am a little bit older than you and therefore am assuming airs. You often say among yourselves that people don’t know you. Suppose someone should know you, I should like to know how you would appear to that person.’ Zilu immediately replied, ‘I should like to rule over a country with a thousand carriages, situated between two powerful neighbours, involved in war and suffering from famine. I should like to take charge of such a country and in three years, the nation would become strong and orderly.’ Confucious smiled at this remark and said, ‘How about you, A Qiu?’ Ran Qiu replied, ‘Let me have a country sixty or seventy li square or perhaps only fifty or sixty li square. Put it in my charge, and in three years, the people will have enough to eat, but as for teaching them moral order and music, I shall leave that to the superior man.’ [Turning to Gongxi Hua] Confucious said, ‘How about you A Chi?’ Gongxi Hua replied, ‘Not that I say I can do it, but I’m will to learn this. At the ceremonies of religious worship and at the conference of the princes, I should like to wear the ceremonial cap and gown and be a minor official assisting at the ceremony.’ ‘How about you A Dian?’ The latter [Zengxi] was just playing on the se, and with a bang he left the instrument and arose to speak. ‘You know my ambition is different from theirs.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, said Confucious, ‘we are just trying to find out what each would like to do.’ Then he replied, ‘In late spring, when the new spring dress is made, I would like to go with five or six grown-ups and six or seven children to bathe in the River Chi’i, and after the bath go and enjoy the breeze in the Wuyi woods, and then sing on the way home’. Confucious heaved a deep sigh and said, ‘You are the man after my own heart’

Autumn Twilight by Arthur Symons

The long September evening dies
In mist along the fields and lanes;
Only a few faint stars surprise
The lingering twilight as it wanes.

Night creeps across the darkening vale;
On the horizon tree by tree
Fades into shadowy skies as pale
As moonlight on a shadowy sea.

And, down the mist-enfolded lanes,
Grown pensive now with evening,
See, lingering as the twilight wanes,
Lover with lover wandering.

And This I dreamt, and this I dream, by Arseny Tarkovsky

And this I dreamt, and this I dream,
And some time this I will dream again,
And all will be repeated, all be re-embodied,
You will dream everything I have seen in dream.

To one side from ourselves, to one side from the world
Wave follows wave to break on the shore,
On each wave is a star, a person, a bird,
Dreams, reality, death - on wave after wave.

No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be,
Life is a wonder of wonders, and to wonder
I dedicate myself, on my knees, like an orphan,
Alone - among mirrors - fenced in by reflections:
Cities and seas, iridescent, intensified.
A mother in tears takes a child on her lap.

Discipline & Punishment

Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It’s like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there’s no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment — nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing.

- Roberto Bolano

Soul, my soul

Soul, my soul, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,
up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault
of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.
Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,
nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you
give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.

- Archilochus

Revolution

Revolution is not experienced as a present hardship we have to endure for the happiness and freedom of the future generations, but as the present hardship over which this future happiness and freedom already cast their shadow – in it, we already are free while fighting for freedom, we already are happy while fighting for happiness, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontian wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legitimized or delegitimized by the long term outcome of the present acts; it is as it were its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its own truth.'

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/biography/

In the BBC

What people suffer from is being trapped within themselves – in a world of individualism everyone is trapped in their own feelings, trapped within their own imaginations. Our job as public service broadcasters is to take people beyond the limits of their own self, and until we do that we will carry on declining.

The BBC should realize that. I have an idealistic view, but if the BBC could do that, taking people beyond their own selves, it will renew itself in a way that jumps over the competition. The competition is obsessed by serving people in their little selves. And in a way, actually, Murdoch for all his power, is trapped by the self. That’s his job, to feed the self.

In the BBC, it’s the next step forward. It doesn’t mean we go back to the 1950s and tell people how to dress, what we do is say “we can free you from yourself” – and people would love it.

- Adam Curtis