Dream of the Red Chamber

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

Attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street.

[http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-70 Extended discourse in Dictionary of the History of Ideas]

Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's forte is the unhurried exploration of every nuance of a situation.

Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's forte is the unhurried exploration of every nuance of a situation.

The world is large.

When I come back to London, I feel really safe and familiar. But sometimes I feel like I'm on standby, waiting to go somewhere else – where something else is happening.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings