Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

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Syl's Smile total mindless rambling utterance on fearless hearts in love

Posted to Utterances

by tinker jack on 2004-05-06 05:59:00

First, the Jewish community
excommunicated him, prohibiting Jews from standing within six feet of his body.


"Goethe once wrote the brilliant Sorrows of Young
Werther to purge himself of despair after a failed love affair. Yet his hero
Spinoza was a man known for his asceticism, if not in theory then in practice.
Spinoza was nobody’s hedonist. He survived primarily off a diet of gruel. He
lived in humble abodes, and in some years he feared for his personal safety when
he left his home. No Goethe, let alone a Don Juan, Spinoza is a man whose sex
life, or lack thereof, confounds his biographers.


Could Spinoza, like his disciple Goethe, write
novels about love? Highly doubtful. "As far as sensual pleasure is
concerned," he argued, "the mind gets so caught up in it... that it is
quite prevented from thinking of anything else. But after the enjoyment of
sensual pleasure is past, the greatest sadness follows. ... And there are
innumerable examples of people who have hastened their death through too much
sensual pleasure."


I guess you can tell why Spinoza is known as a
rationalist, and not a romantic"


"We sat...surrounded by stacks of dusty, incomprehensible books with huge formulas inset
artistically on the page like poems."

-the doorbell rang.

Irwin seemed embarrassed, "I think it may be a lady."

Irwin had a queer, old-world habit of calling women ladies." Fine fine," I gestured largely, "Bring her in."

Irwin shook his head, "You would upset her."

I smiled into my amber cylinder of cold beer."  
Syl's smile, Sylvia's smile, so. many facets to a cut diamond




Syl's Smile total mindless rambling utterance on fearless hearts in love

Posted to Utterances

by tinker jack on 2004-05-06 05:59:00

First, the Jewish community
excommunicated him, prohibiting Jews from standing within six feet of his body.


"Goethe once wrote the brilliant Sorrows of Young
Werther to purge himself of despair after a failed love affair. Yet his hero
Spinoza was a man known for his asceticism, if not in theory then in practice.
Spinoza was nobody’s hedonist. He survived primarily off a diet of gruel. He
lived in humble abodes, and in some years he feared for his personal safety when
he left his home. No Goethe, let alone a Don Juan, Spinoza is a man whose sex
life, or lack thereof, confounds his biographers.


Could Spinoza, like his disciple Goethe, write
novels about love? Highly doubtful. "As far as sensual pleasure is
concerned," he argued, "the mind gets so caught up in it... that it is
quite prevented from thinking of anything else. But after the enjoyment of
sensual pleasure is past, the greatest sadness follows. ... And there are
innumerable examples of people who have hastened their death through too much
sensual pleasure."


I guess you can tell why Spinoza is known as a
rationalist, and not a romantic"


"We sat...surrounded by stacks of dusty, incomprehensible books with huge formulas inset
artistically on the page like poems."

-the doorbell rang.

Irwin seemed embarrassed, "I think it may be a lady."

Irwin had a queer, old-world habit of calling women ladies." Fine fine," I gestured largely, "Bring her in."

Irwin shook his head, "You would upset her."

I smiled into my amber cylinder of cold beer."  
Syl's smile, Sylvia's smile, so. many facets to a cut diamond