Ambiguous Adventure Quotes

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom. He did not use the notion of the Procrustean bed, but he outlined it perfectly. His argument is that they repress children's natural biophilia, their love of living things. But the problem is more general; soccer moms try to eliminate the trial and error, the antifragility, from children's lives, move them away from the ecological and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (soccer-mom-compatible) maps of reality. Good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are now totally untrained to handle ambiguity. As a child of civil war, I disbelieve in structured learning . . . . Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living, compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life of an empty-suit CEO with a preset schedule and an alarm clock.

The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.

Sea, the limpidity of your wave is awaiting my gaze. I fix my eyes upon you, and you glitter, without limit. I wish for you, through all eternity.

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world -- and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, "all that is solid melts into air.

If we put this whole progression in terms of our discussion of the possibilities of heroism, it goes like this: Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the possibility of cosmic heroism, to the very service of God. His life thereby acquires ultimate value in place of merely social and cultural, historical value. He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness, his inner yearning for absolute significance, to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance, for cosmic heroism. This invisible mystery at the heart of every creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. This is the meaning of faith. At the same time it is the meaning of the merger of psychology and religion in Kierkegaard's thought. The truly open person, the one who has shed his character armor, the vital lie of his cultural conditioning, is beyond the help of any mere "science," of any merely social standard of health. He is absolutely alone and trembling on the bring of oblivion-which is at the same time the brink of infinity. To give him the new support that he needs, the "courage to renounce dread without any dread...only faith is capable of," says Kierkegaard. Not that this is an easy out for man, or a cure-all for the human condition-Kierkegaard is never facile. He gives a strikingly beautiful idea: not that [faith] annihilates dread, but remaining ever young, it is continually developing itself out of the death throe of dread. In other words, as long as man is an ambiguous creature he can never banish anxiety; what he can do instead is to use anxiety as an eternal spring for growth into new dimensions of thought and trust. Faith poses a new life task, the adventure in openness to a multi-dimensional reality.

Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was “too thin,” yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” which he was. So was she.

In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know. If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.

In other words, as long as man is an ambiguous creature he can never banish anxiety; what he can do instead is to use anxiety as an eternal spring for growth into new dimensions of thought and trust. Faith poses a new life task, the adventure in openness to a multidimensional reality.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom….Soccer moms try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (soccer-mom-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity….Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.

There is a mode of vital experience -- experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life's possibilities and perils -- that is shared by men and women all over the world today. I will call this body of experience "modernity." To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world -- and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are. Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, "all that is solid melts into air.

So then one may sketch her spending her morning in a China robe of ambiguous gender among her books; then receiving a client or two (for she had many scores of suppliants) in the same garment; then she would take a turn in the garden and clip the nut trees - for which knee breeches were convenient; then she would change into a flowered taffeta which best suited a drive to Richmond and a proposal of marriage from some great nobleman; and so back again to town, where she would don a snuff-coloured gown like a lawyer's and visit the courts to hear how her cases were doing - for her fortune was wasting hourly and the suits seemed no nearer consummation than they had been a hundred years ago; and so, finally, when night came, she would more often than not become a nobleman complete from head to toe and walk the streets in search of adventure.

There exists a mythopoetic imagine which has vanished from our rational age. Though such imagination is present everywhere, it is both tabooed and dreaded, so that it even appears to be a risky experiment or a questionable adventure to entrust oneself to the uncertain path that leads into the depths of the unconscious. It is considered the path of error, of equivocation and misunderstanding. Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world.

The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom [helicopter parent]….They try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (parent-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers, except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity….Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.

I’m going to say a word, just for your general opinion and consideration,” he said, his light blue gaze touching hers. “I’m listening.” “Marriage.” Zephyr blinked. Had he actually just suggested a proposal? A marriage? With her? A thousand thoughts all flitted through her mind, none of them making any sense, but several of them centering on whether she was reading too much or too little into one blasted word. “I think”—she stumbled, backing away from him and toward the village—“that if you mean to ask a question, you should ask it. And you shouldn’t make it so stupidly ambiguous just on the chance that a negative response might embarrass you or wound your feelings.” “Is that so?” He stalked after her. “It is so. And another thing. Before you ask such a question, consider giving me—or whoever you intend on asking—a reason to say yes.

We often think the purpose of criticism is to nail things down. During my years as an art critic, I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists love deer, and something of that desire to secure, to stabilize, to render certain and definite the open-ended, nebulous, and adventurous work of artists is present in many who work in that confinement sometimes called the art world. A similar kind of aggression against the slipperiness of the work and the ambiguities of the artist's intent and meaning often exists in literary criticism and academic scholarship, a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain. What escapes categorization can escape detection altogether. There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeing the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself great art. This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.

بالمدفع تمسك المدرسة بسلاح الحرب الفعال، لكنها أفضل من المدفع. تحقق النصر، وتكرس الإحلال. المدفع يرغم الأجسام، أما المدرسة فتصوغ العقول، وتكيف النفوس، فحيث يحدث المدفع حفرة من الرماد، والموت، والعفونة الشديدة، وقبل أن يفيق الإنسان وينهض، تكون المدرسة الجديدة قد مدت رواق سلامها. إن صباح البعث سيكون صباحًا مباركًا بفضل المدرسة الميمونة. ومن قوة المغناطيس تستمد المدرسة إشعاعها، وهما متضامنان في نظام جديد، وبالطريقة ذاتها التي تتعاضد بها نواة الخلية المغناطيسية في المجال. فالانقلاب الذي يقع في حياة الناس داخل هذا النظام الجديد يشبه تغير بعض القوانين الفيزيائية داخل المجال المغناطيسي. ترى الناس مغلوبين مهزومين على امتداد خطوط القوة غير المرئية والمتغطرسة. وترى الفوضى تنتظم، والإثارة تهدأ. وفي صباح الندم والحسرة تتجاوب أصداء أناشيد الشكر والامتنان. هذا الانقلاب الحاد في المنظومة الطبيعية هو وحده القادر على إعطاء تفسير مقنع بحتمية اللقاء بين الإنسان الجديد، والمدرسة من دون إرادة أي منهما، فلا الإنسان يريد المدرسة، لأنها ترغمه - كي يعيش، بمعنى أن يكون حرًا يتغذى ويلبس - على أن يفعل ذلك عبر مقاعدها. ولا المدرسة تريد الإنسان؛ لأنه يفرض عليها من أجل الاستمرار - بمعنى أن تتوسع وتتأصل حيث كانت الضرورة تغرسها - الاعتماد عليه.

إن الذي كشفه العلم لأنظار الغرب أقل إنسانية بشكل سافر، لكن اعترفوا بأنه أكثر ثباتًا وتماسكًا.

Perchè gli sembrava che quella Notte segnasse un termine. Quello scintillio di stelle sul suo capo, non era forse il costellato chiavistello chiuso su un'epoca ormai conclusa? Dietro il chiavistello, un vivido mondo astrale dolcemente splendeva, un mondo che doveva essere glorificato per l'ultima volta. La sua voce, levatasi man mano, come all'unisono col sorgere delle stelle, s'innalzava ora a una pienezza patetica. Dal lontanissimo passato, sentiva fluire in lui e spandersi attraverso la voce un lungo amore ora in pericolo.

We thought, and we still think, that communism is ambiguous and anticommunism even more so. We thought, and we still think, that a politics founded on anticommunism is in the long run a politics of war and in the short run a politics of regression, that there are many ways of not being communist, and that the problem has barely been taken up when one has said that one is not a communist...To say, as we did, that Marxism remains true as a critique or negation without being true as an action or positively was to place ourselves outside history, and particularly outside Marxism, was to justify it for reasons which are not its own, and, finally, was to organize equivocalness. In history, Marxist critique and Marxist action are a single movement. Not that the critique of the present derives as a corollary from perspectives of the future--Marxism is not a utopia--but because, on the contrary, communist action is in principle only the critique continued, carried to its final consequences, and because, finally, revolution is the critique in power. If one verifies that it does not keep the promises of the critique, one cannot conclude from that: let us keep the critique and forget the action. There must be something in the critique itself that germinates the defects in the action. We found this ferment in the Marxist idea of a critique historically embodied, of a class which is the suppression of itself, which, in its representatives, results in the conviction of being the universal in action, in the right to assert oneself without restriction, and in unverifiable violence...It is therefore quite impossible to cut communism in two, to say that it is right in what it negates and wrong in what it asserts: for its way of asserting is already concretely present in its way of negating; in its critique of capitalism there is already, as we have said, not a utopian representation of the future, but at least the absolute of a negation, or negation realized, the classless society called for by history. However things may appear from this perspective, the defects of capitalism remain defects; but the critique which denounces them must be freed from any compromise with an absolute of the negation which, in the long run, is germinating new oppressions...This Marxism which remains true whatever it does, which does without proofs and verifications, is not a philosophy of history--it is Kant in disguise, and it is Kant again that we ultimately find in the concept of revolution as absolute action...We would be happy if we could inspire a few--or many--to bear their freedom, not to exchange it at a loss; for it is not only their own thing, their secret, their pleasure, their salvation --it involves everyone else.

Fake Chemical State is a sexually ambiguous record that has an aura of flitting from one romantic adventure to the next. Around the time I wrote it, I was living in Ibiza and had a boyfriend – a very sweet guy who was gorgeous to look at, super-fit, metrosexual and well-groomed. Everything was fun in the beginning. For a while it was oddly liberating because, with a straight boy, I could walk down the road holding hands and didn’t have to worry about public displays of affection, whereas with a woman you need to stay on alert and be aware of what’s happening around you to avoid homophobic harassment.

The fundamental fault of the nihilist is that, challenging all given values, he does not find, beyond their ruin, the importance of that universal, absolute end which freedom itself is. It is possible that, even in this failure, a man may nevertheless keep his taste for an existence which he originally felt as a joy. Hoping for no justification, he will nevertheless take delight in living. He will not turn aside from things which he does not believe in. He will seek a pretext in them for a gratuitous display of activity. Such a man is what is generally called an adventurer. He throws himself into his undertakings with zest, into exploration, conquest, war, speculation, love, politics, but he does not attach himself to the end at which he aims; only to his conquest. He likes action for its own sake. He finds joy in spreading through the world a freedom which remains indifferent to its content. Whether the taste for adventure appears to be based on nihilistic despair or whether it is born directly from the experience of the happy days of childhood, it always implies that freedom is realized as an independence in regard to the serious world and that, on the other hand, the ambiguity of existence is felt not as a lack but in its positive aspect. This attitude dialectically envelops nihilism’s opposition to the serious and the opposition to nihilism by existence as such. But, of course, the concrete history of an individual does not necessarily espouse this dialectic, by virtue of the fact that his condition is wholly present to him at each moment and because his freedom before it is, at every moment, total. From the time of his adolescence a man can define himself as an adventurer. The union of an original, abundant vitality and a reflective scepticism will particularly lead to this choice.

Now she understood the Guild receptionist’s ambiguous expression. Yes, goblins were weak. Their party of eager adventurers—their Warrior, their Wizard, their Fighter—had known that. Goblins were about as large and smart and strong as a human child. Just as they’d heard. But what happened when children took up weapons, plotted evil, sought to kill, and traveled in packs ten strong? They hadn’t even considered it. Their party was weak, inexperienced, unfamiliar with combat, had no money nor luck, and most importantly, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. It was a common mistake, the kind you hear about all the time.

Ambiguity— Maybe it’s not something to fear Maybe it’s just another adventure to take or puzzle to solve

Diplomacy is often duplicity, or scheming, or speculation. Creative ambiguity and possibility are central to them all--appealing to others' visions, rather than to an exclusive certainty, to predict opportunities for them, rather than asserting a single predictable outcome. -- SAMUEL WATSON, 'James Wilkinson: Schemer, Scoundrel, Soldier, Spy...Success?

Grounded in awareness of transiency, ambiguity, and contingency, such a person values lightness of touch, flexibility and adaptability, a sense of humor and adventure, appreciation of other viewpoints, a celebration of difference.

He had no answer. He had no right to all the grace and bounty of this world, earned and maintained by the work, the devotion, the faithfulness of its people. Paradise is for those who make Paradise. He did not belong. He was a frontiersman, one of a breed who had denied their past, their history. The settlers of Anarres had turned their backs on the Old World and its past, opted for the future only. But as surely as the future becomes the past, the past becomes the future. To deny is not to achieve. The Odonians who left Urras had been wrong, wrong in their desperate courage, to deny their history, to forgo the possibility of return. The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.