Roberto Calasso famous quotes

We establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Sacrifice #Giving #Connections

Education is paradoxical in that it is largely composed of things that cannot be learned
-- Roberto Calasso

#Inspirational #Paradoxical

The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Father #Hero #Men

Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Alive #Might #Divine

The gods are fugitive guests of literature.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Guests #Literature #Fugitive

Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Tree #Stories #Branches

Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Stories #Branches

The author is the successor of the saint, everyone respects the author.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Saint

Wendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy.
-- Roberto Calasso

#Sexy #Lying #Identity

I don't feel I made any sacrifices at all. I'm doing my best to juggle.

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity?

Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is mans right to have the earth to till with his own hands, the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.

Nature knows no political boundaries. She puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers the master's right on her favourite child, the strongest in courage and industry ... The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel.

This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.

If a boxer ever went as crazy as Nijinsky all the wowsers in the world would be screaming 'punch-drunk.' Well, who hit Nijinsky? And why isn't there a campaign against ballet? It gives girls thick legs

I don't have anything against my mom, but my family has no emotional connection to each other.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do 'resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes.