The Philosophers' Cocoon

 compiled by Axel Gelfert

1. “Can you see through a wall? Can you see through human skin? X-rays see through solid – or so-called solid – objects. There are things in life that exist, and yet our eyes cannot see them.”
2. “A drunken man walks in a way that is quite impossible for a sober man to imitate, and vice versa.”
3. “Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest? Could one teach a dog to simulate pain?”
4. “As above, so below. The human being finds himself, or herself, in the middle. There is as much space outside the human, proportionately, as inside.”
5. “You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.”
6. “Suppose that at certain intervals situations repeated themselves, and that someone said time was circular. Would this be right or wrong? Neither.”
7. “In a dream, are all the characters really you – different aspects of you? Do answers come in dreams?”
8. “Letters are symbols. They are building blocks of words which form our languages. Languages help us communicate. Even with complicated languages used by intelligent people, misunderstanding is a common occurrence.”
9. “Think of the picture of blindness as a darkness in the soul or in the head of the blind man.”
10. “Miscommunication sometimes leads to arguments, and arguments sometimes lead to fights. Anger is usually present in arguments and fights. Anger is an emotion, usually classified as a negative emotion.”
11. “I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape.”
12. “This of course is only a temporary solution to a problem which is going to keep returning, and sometimes these temporary solutions are worse for us than the original problem.”
13. “Is this language somehow too coarse and material for what we want to say? Then how is another one to be constructed? – And how strange that we should be able to do anything at all with the one we have!”
14. “Sometimes jokes are welcome. Like the one about the kid who said: ‘I enjoyed school. It was just the principal of the thing.’”
15. “Can I not say: a cry, a laugh, are full of meaning? And that means, roughly: much can be gathered from them.”
16. “If we look at a river in which numbered logs are floating, we can describe events on land with reference to these: for example, ‘When the 105th log passed, I ate dinner’.”
17. “It all comes out now, flowing like a river: that which is, and is not.”
18. “Why, suppose one were to say: the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it, so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. This would not be absurd.”
19. “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
20. “You know about death; that it is just a change, not an end.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein: 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19

The Log Lady: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20.