Saturday, September 29, 2007

3 Quotes from Isolarion

My friend Levi sent me a book by James Attlee called Isolarion. It's the author's extended, personal pilgrimage down Cowley Street in Oxford. There are lots of tangential ramblings of thought to go with the physical pilgrimage. Here are three short parts that I dog-eared as they captured my fancy:

p.199 "I am usefully reminded that sometimes, when there is no train or plane fast enough to transport you beyond the reach of your troubles, a long walk may be your only way out."

p.273 Quoting Claude Levi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques: "Humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all, and is preparing to produce civilisation in bulk, as if it were sugar-beet. The same dish is to be served to us every day."

p.26 Quoting from A.C. Grayling's The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life: "--for our moods are like tunings on the wireless, picking up truths at different frequencies, so that if we don't know the gamut of human feelings, neither can we know the gamut of human truth."

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