like flies

Thinking moves in circles and people appear to me like flies which always bump into the window pane when they try to get out into the open. Someone has got to open the window, but much work and leisure is required for that.

from a letter by Count Hans Ludwig Paul Yorck von Wartenburg to Wilhelm Dilthey

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philosopher's window

Hermine Wittgenstein tells of the bewilderment of the family over Ludwig’s determination, immediately upon his return home at the end of World War One, to rid himself unconditionally of his whole fortune; and of her own dismay at his decision to become a country schoolteacher. She protested to him that his teaching in an elementary school would be like ‘using a precision instrument to open crates’. She was silenced when he replied: ‘You remind me of someone who is looking through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He doesn’t know what kind of a storm is raging outside and that this person is perhaps only with great effort keeping himself on his feet.’

from here

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