Ученик философа

Нарциссистам легче заботиться о других людях, поскольку они живут в мире с собой. Они творческие люди, у них есть воображение, чувство юмора, сострадание. А те, кому недостает нарциссизма, — завистливые, злобные, пустые оболочки. Это они пытаются всем внушить, что нарциссизм — это плохо.

Some teachers of meditation exhort us to empty our minds. Others permit the quiet circling of random thoughts, increasingly to be set at a distance and sensed as unreal. Father Bernard followed both rules, but more usually the latter which was easier because more ambiguous.

Hurt vanity automatically brings with it the resentment that demands revenge: to reassert one’s value by passing on the hurt. ‘I am not to be trifled with. Someone will suffer for this.’

One of the more universal aspects of human wickedness is the willingness of almost everyone to indulge in spiteful gossip.

It is good to declare a blankness now and then. We are not anything very much, not even machines. You imagine that your thoughts are rays of power. Simple actions may be a better way to just views.’
‘Simple actions — ’
‘Undertaken in a light shed from outside, some ordinary faith or hope, nothing clever.’

You told me to keep off tranquillizers and endure it all, I am enduring it all, it hasn’t made me wise.’

‘You want to get everything right all at once. Why not fiddle around with the bits?

I can’t do anything until I’ve cleared my mind. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘Not necessarily.’

I feel I’m in a steel box or something.’
‘People get out of boxes, it’s often easier than they think.’

‘That is the final paradox. When one reaches a certain point, morality becomes a riddle to which one must find the answer. The holy inevitably moves toward the demonic. Fra Angelico loved Signorelli.’
‘Perhaps he did. But then didn’t Signorelli love Fra Angelico? The demonic moves toward the holy.’

You were right to mention love. Isn’t that somehow the proof that good and evil exclude each other?’
‘Plato might have thought that, Plotinus might have felt it, but I doubt if you can make sense of it.’
‘Perhaps I can’t - but - when we love people - and things - and our work and - we somehow get the assurance that good is there - it’s absolutely pure and absolutely there - it’s in the fabric - it must be.’

‘So you are a narcissist?’
‘Certainly, narcissists can look after others because they are content with themselves. They are creative, imaginative, humorous, sympathetic. Those who lack narcissism are resentful envious husks. It is they who try to give it a bad name.’

What a hypocrite she is, thought Gabriel, and yet she’s sincere. Can there be sincere hypocrites? Yes, and they’re the most maddening of all.

it’s odd how stupid a clever person can be.

Not that she had anything very terrible to cry about, since she was happily married and had a lovely son, but she cried often for the anguish of the world because of its little vulnerable places, or because of the frailty of everything she loved.

— Ты знаешь, Джордж так и не зашел ее навестить после первого дня.
— Джордж — демоническая личность, вроде Алекс, — сказал Брайан, — Он решит, что это очень стильно — не приходить, а против стиля не попрешь.

— Тебя дьявол послал, чтоб меня мучить. Что б тебе не уйти, пока я тебя не убил? Неужели ты не можешь проявить человеколюбие и не дожидаться, чтоб тебя убили?

Вселенной пришлось бы содрогнуться и сотрястись, чтобы изменить хотя бы одного человека.

Она воспринимает Джорджа как нерешенную задачу, подумала Габриэль, она видит в нем вызов и думает, что это любовь.

Конечно, ни один философский труд никогда не бывает закончен — его просто перестают писать.