Du und Ich (detail) by Arno Breker, 1940

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

André Masson, Birth of Birds (1925)

Children circle around an ultraviolet lamp to get a dose of vitamin D in Murmansk, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, August 1977.

Lauren Bacall, by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for Vogue, 1943

Ross Bleckner, Bird Painting for Bid for Life

We shall be quiet and wait till a star falls from heaven. Can you see, how above one light appears after the other and they together form a dome! We sit in silence and fold our hands in prayer. We shall be quiet and wait until a star falls from heaven.

I had to philosophize. Otherwise, I could not live in this world.

- Edmund Husserl

“Mankind’s greatest accomplishment of the past is that we no longer have to live in continual fear of wild animals, barbarians, gods, and our own dreams.”

—Daybreak, §5 (edited).

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

- Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

Robert Gligorov, Transfiguration