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There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization.
Bruno Schulz
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the limitations of capturing the essence of grand ideas or experiences with simple facts.

Bruno Schulz suggests that some concepts or occurrences are so profound and expansive that they transcend the ability of mere facts to encapsulate them. These magnificent ideas or realities are in a state of tentative existence, testing whether the tangible world can support their full manifestation, but they often retreat, concerned that embodiment might diminish their inherent integrity.

Themes

RealityIntegrityMagnificentConceptsLimitations

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the nature of art and its ineffable qualities.

More from Bruno Schulz

Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.
Bruno SchulzRead
An event may be small and insignificant in its origin , and yet, when drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it and irradiates it violently.
Bruno SchulzRead
As we manipulate everyday words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we are building our houses with broken pieces of sculptures and ruined statues of gods as the barbarians did.
Bruno SchulzRead
The days hardened with cold and boredom like last year's loaves of bread. One began to cut them with blunt knives without appetite, with a lazy indifference.
Bruno SchulzRead

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