"I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman's irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity. ... Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. That is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Escapism
30 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Escapism →
Related Quotes
"Chorus: Let not thy love to man o'erleap the bounds Of reason, nor neglect thy wretched state: So my fond hope sugges…"
"Shakespeare's final Exeunts order us out of the theater because the unfinished business they leave us with cannot be …"
"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capabili…"
"Bhikkhus, this Kassapa is content with any kind of almsfood, and he speaks in praise of contentment with any kind of …"
"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. B…"
"They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will…"
"What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape …"
"The foolish read to escape reality; the wise surrender to it."
"Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choo…"
"With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others on…"