Language & Life

126. The danger is great. To write too much about life and make of it a deception. What can be said about life then becomes the shield a man uses to protect himself from it. He shields himself against the silence, from having nothing to say.

128. Language is not designed to advance an explanation of the world, but to get something accomplished between men within it.  The men who communicate with each other to erect the house have made more sense of life than the great philosopher. The house is now a protection from the rain and cold, a place where the family gathers. And what of the philosopher’s idea?

142. There are simply facts. You can do no more with them than to point them out. Any explanation of them is nonsense. The will to explain is a bad habit and the most obvious evidence of a man's weakness.

187.  A novel may have a message, as they say. A poem may. So may a film or a photograph or a painting. Perhaps the artist intends these messages to be universal, to function for all men. But in art these messages best function within the work. It works differently for philosophy. A philosopher only has a message. His life and the life of every other man who has ever lived is where he puts his message. A philosopher begins by saying that other men cannot live outside his message. Whether other men want it or not his message has included them. Indeed, some philosophers have attempted to include all things in the world and the existence of the world itself in their message.