Quotes
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
― Simone Weil
“Attention is vitality.”
― Susan Sontag
“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
“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 love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’”
― Simone Weil
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell
“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
“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
― William Blake
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”
― Charlie Munger
“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 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 only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus
“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
“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that’s much harder?”
― Ayn Rand
“Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”
― David Whyte
“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“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
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
― James A. Michener
“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
“Beauty is the illumination of your soul.”
― John O’Donohue
“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
“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
“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