We Are Not By Nature

The Writers Who Have The Deepest Influence On One Are Those One Reads In Ones More Impressionable, Early Life, And Often It Is The More Youthful Works Of Those Writers That Leave The Deepest Imprint.

My Existence From Day To Day Has Become A Matter Of Averting My Eyes, Of Cringing. Death Is The Only Truth Left. Death Is What I Cannot Bear To Think. At Every Moment When I Am Thinking Of Something Else, I Am Not Thinking Death, Am Not Thinking The Truth.

Machiavelli Says That If As A Ruler You Accept That Your Every Action Must Pass Moral Scrutiny, You Will Without Fail Be Defeated By An Opponent Who Submits To No Such Moral Test. To Hold On To Power, You Have Not Only To Master The Crafts Of Deception And Treachery But To Be Prepared To Use Them Where Necessary.

Belief May Be No More, In The End, Than A Source Of Energy, Like A Battery Which One Clips Into An Idea To Make It Run.

Music Expresses Feeling, That Is To Say, Gives Shape And Habitation To Feeling, Not In Space But In Time. To The Extent That Music Has A History That Is More Than A History Of Its Formal Evolution, Our Feelings Must Have A History Too. Perhaps Certain Qualities Of Feeling That Found Expression In Music Can Be Recorded By Being Notated On Paper, Have Become So Remote That We Can No Longer Inhabit Them As Feelings, Can Get A Grasp Of Them Only After Long Training In The History And Philosophy Of Music, The Philosophical History Of Music, The History Of Music As A History Of The Feeling Soul.