Quotes
“Attention is vitality.”
― Susan Sontag
“Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?”
— Lao Tzu
“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.”
― Robert M. Pirsig
“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”
― John Steinbeck
“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’”
― Simone Weil
“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
― William Blake
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
― Robert M. Pirsig
“The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk
“The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
― Anaïs Nin
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The most stubborn facts are those of the spirit, not those of the physical world.”
― Jean Gottmann
“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.”
― Patti Smith
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary... but love it.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. To know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky. Not for others, but for myself, for the trail I know I am leaving.”
― Steve Jobs
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot