"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."

 

Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)
Scottish author, essayist, & historian

"Wherever the psyche does announce absolute truths - such as, for example, "God is motion," or " God is One "-it necessarily falls into one or the other of its own antitheses. For the two statements might equally well be: "God is rest," or "God is All." Through onesidedness the psyche disintegrates and loses its capacity for cognition. It becomes an unreflective (because unreflectable) succession of psychic states, each of which fancies itself its own justification because it does not, or...

The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images, 1928–29, sometimes translated as The Treason of Images) is a painting by the Belgian René Magritte, painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" , French for "This is not a pipe." The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe, which was Magritte's point:

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff...