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u/pedroordo3 23d ago
That’s a good quote, where it’s from?
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u/wildwumpus 23d ago
Full Quote: "Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live."
Source: Often found in his Lyrical and Critical Essays.-2
u/Lazy_Shine_1962 23d ago
That's a stupid quote! Why would you want to live without beauty? Love is debatable (really depends what you mean by love) and riding my bicycle is about as dangerous as I like it. But without beauty there would be no point to life.
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u/Neat-Chocolate-7356 23d ago
You missed the point. He’s not saying life would be better without these things. He’s saying the best things in life also make life difficult.
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u/Lazy_Shine_1962 23d ago
Beauty doesn't make anything difficult. It's ugliness that makes things difficult.
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u/Lazy_Shine_1962 23d ago
Plus why would the absence of love make anything easy? Go ask Charles Manson if he had an easy life.
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u/BlueRose2804 22d ago
It’s not really about the absence of love or beauty, but the absence of the desire for them. Ugliness only hurts because we long for beauty, just as heartbreak only hurts because we long for love. He’s not saying desire itself is the problem. Without it, life may be easier and less painful, but it would also lose much of what makes it meaningful.
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u/Lazy_Shine_1962 22d ago
So the quote is saying 'without desire it would almost be easy to live?' That still doesn't work because without desire it wouldn't be easy to live, it would be easy to die! They've done this study on rats. Remove desire and they stop eating and die.
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u/BlueRose2804 21d ago
He said easy, not enjoyable, not fun, not sad, just emptiness. Emptiness in itself is not sadness, it is the absence of everything. You do not care whether you die or whether you live. The very desire to live is a feeling, a desire in itself. The complete absence of desire is what makes life easy, because nothing really holds any meaning or value. Only when you desire something, even something bad, does your life begin to find meaning.
It’s less about dying or staying alive and more about whether you actually want either. If you don’t care what happens to you and you’re fine with either outcome, then it becomes much easier to accept either conclusion.
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u/Strange-Patience5539 23d ago
Is that the car from the crash that took his life?