New Orts #49

December 22 MMXXIV

If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.
— John Bunyan (1628-1688)

All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
— Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Smoking is a sinister form of breath yoga. Many smokers know that the only time they breathe deeply and mindfully, bringing this normally automatic process into the light of consciousness, is when they take a drag on a cigarette.... A cigarette is simply a forty-cent yoga class, with Darth Vader as the teacher.
— Hendrick Hertzberg, in The New Yorker, September 9, 2002

The radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babble of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.
— Aldous Huxley, On Silence, 1946