Craving for knowledge

“The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes so embarrassing that at this loss I felt only a little more emotion than if, during a walk, I had lost my visiting card.”

 "(...)the craving for knowledge and the cruelty of having that knowledge, if you like, and the punishment of having that knowledge.”

 The motive of all of it the motive of all of it was loneliness,
All the panic encounters and despair
Were bred in fear of the lost night, apart,
Outlined by pain, alone.
 Promiscuous
As mercy.
 Fear-led and led again to fear
At evening toward the cave where part fire, part
Pity lived in that voluptuousness To end one and begin another loneliness.
This is the most intolerable motive : this
Must be given back to life again,
Made superhuman, made human, out of pain
Turned to the personal, the pure release:
The rings of Plato and Homer's golden chain
Or Lenin with his cry of
Dare We Win.

- Muriel Rukeyser's Reader