[…] God’s image in us is only individual traits, only momentary actualities.
That’s how the anthropomorphisms of the Bible are. God has a nose, eyes, ears, everything one wants, He cries, pleads, repents, anything one wants, but always only from instance to instance, always only when something in man is to be created in God’s image. He never has two attributes at the same time—that would already be form. Always only one after the other, always only “attributes of action” (Qualities are simultaneous, actions one after the other).
- “The Science of God”
[…] in each case God dispatches none of his messengers with more than one message.
- “A Note on Anthropomorphisms”
Wittgenstein:
I should like to say that what dawns here lasts only as long as I am occupied with the object in a particular way . . . Ask yourself ‘For how long am I struck by a thing?’ – For how long do I find it new.
- Philosophical Investigations
The likeness makes a striking impression on me; then the impression fades . . . It only struck me for a few minutes, and then no longer did.
- Philosophical Investigations
It is as if the aspect were something that only dawns, but does not remain; and yet this must be a conceptual remark, not a psychological one.
- Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology
Coetzee
[…] and while I do think—or do have intimations—that there is something 'beyond' the self or "larger than" the self, I don't know that one can actually get there or stay there for long. The Wordsworthian term 'intimations' seems to me about as far as one can go: for an instant the veil opens and one has a flash of insight: then it closes again.
- ““Nevertheless, My Sympathies Are with the Karamazovs””