various and sundry (harrison)

Religion, matrimony and burial of the dead embody the linear openness of time. Religion is born of the idea of providence. It implies an awareness of the future. Burial of the dead is grounded in reverence for the past, for the ancestral, in short for what we call tradition. Tradition comes to us from the domain of the dead. Both religion and burial, in turn, serve to consolidate the contract of matrimony, which maintains the genealogical line in the present. (8)

... Prior to its ability to think abstractly, the primitive mind was unable even to conceive of a distinction between truth and falsehood. So many centuries does it take even to become aware of such a dichotomy. (12)

Human vision is privative in nature; it does not see directly into the nature of things but see only the outward surface of phenomenal appearances. (25)

Until a substance emerges into the telos of its form we simply cannot talk about it. Logos begins with the phenomenon. (28)

[On the retroactive redemption of Zarathustra] Herein lies Zarathustra's dilemma on the bridge: redemption must somehow also redeem the past.... such retroactive redemption remains impossible, for when it confronts the past the human will is impotent.

Only an alienated nature seeks adventure. (66)

The forest reveals that desire has no virginity. It does not belong to itself, it belongs to everything that shares in the life impulse itself. Desire is a promiscuous sort of will that appropriates its object and expropriates its subject. The contract of personal consent sublimates this desire as love, but it does not alter its nature. (91)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison