#catastrophe

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. ↗

— Leonard Cohen

#clinical #conversations #days #depression #finds

Great breakthroughs are always followed by great catastrophes. ↗

— Rosalia de Castro

#breakthroughs #catastrophes #followed #great

Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain, and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is experienced as embodied sensation in the catastrophe. ↗

— William Irwin Thompson

#catastrophe #catastrophes #domain #embodied #emergence

Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other. Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe. The fear and enthusiasm we experience at the sight of perfect mechanisms are in exact contrast to the happiness we feel at the sight of a perfect work of art. We sense an attack on our integrity, on our wholeness. That arms and legs are lost or harmed is not yet the greatest danger. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#catastrophe #human-perfection #technical-perfection #technology #titanism

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh. ↗

— Lord Acton

#announced #catastrophe #certain #every #feel

Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback. ↗

— Len Wein

#complete #even #failures #feedback #finished

Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe. ↗

— Germaine Greer

#away #catastrophe #deal #energy #environment

The German Emperor is ageing me; he is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe. ↗

— Edward Grey

#catastrophe #cause #day #emperor #german

As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. ↗

— Shmuel Y. Agnon

#catastrophe #cities #destroyed #exile #exiled

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe. ↗

— Le Corbusier

#catastrophe #hundred #i #new #new york