Tag Archives: Decline and Fall

Evelyn Waugh Is So Zen

 

“[life is] a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the Decline and Fallothers. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It’s great fun . . . Of course at the very centre there’s a point completely at rest, if one could only find it. . . . Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. . . . But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn’t get on it at all. . . . People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they’ve got to join in the game, even if they don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t suit everyone”[11]

Found this great quote from a book I’ve never read while researching Dioynsus on Wikipedia. It reminds of Alan Watts, whom of been listening to way too much lately.