“The mercy of the world is you don’t know what’s going to happen.” Wendell Berry
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” H. P. Lovecraft
“Sadness is caused by intelligence, the more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn’t understand them.” Charles Bukowski
Love these quotes, thank you for sharing. I’m slowly learning that you can’t predict what comes next, only plan for it, or go in blind.
Plan for the worst, and hope for the best. It’s all you can do!
I read this the other day: “if ignorance is bliss, the whole world should be a happier place.” I think I prefer that humor to the somewhat gloomy quotes you sited. 🙂
I need big heapin’ helpings of both.
Brilliant quotations, each from a slightly different perspective. I vividly remember my eighth grade teacher teaching the quotation, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
Jennie,
I think it was Socrates who said that wisdom in knowing how little you know. A little more caution would do a lot of good in this world.
Socrates…thank you. Yes, more caution is a good thing.
💯
I think too of Ecclesiastes 1:17-18: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”
Beautiful. There’s a lot to love in Ecclesiastes.
Nice selection of writers, Mike. Wendell Berry has popped up in my reading list in grad school due to his stance on technology. I think his label as the Kentucky Aristotelian is a fitting description.
Feel free to delete this comment. WordPress was being obstinate this morning.
Nice selection of writers, Mike. Wendell Berry has popped up in my reading list in grad school due to his stance on technology. I think his label as the Kentucky Aristotelian is a fitting description.
Berry, unlike many ecological writers, walks the talk. Only Pentti Linkola could match his faithfulness to his stated positions.
I’ll have to check out Linkola. Thanks for the ideas.
Joshua,
Linkola is a fascinating character.