Same thought, different time

It seems to me that people are either in the business of finding differences or similarities. I'm more fascinated by similarities since I believe they say something profound about reality that descriptions of differences seldom catch; to generalize a little, science and philosophy is about finding underlying principles, and these principles are to be applied universally.

One new favorite of mine is this example from a famous Chinese poem by Wang Wei (王维):

獨在異鄉為異客

Character by character it could be literally interpreted as "alone in strange land as strange guest" although a more flowing translation would be "a lone stranger in a strange land." I'm aware that the translation of King James' Bible that has that famous saying is an interpretation that might not be supported by the original text, but I find it fascinating that the same idea has been individually reached like this.