From Books:
“The millions are awake enough for physical labour; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”
-H. D. Thoreau, Walden
“Refuse to write your life and you have no life.”
-Patricia Hampl, Memory and Imagination
“To be continued?”
-Alaska Young, Looking for Alaska (John Green)
“Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”
-H. D. Thoreau, Walden
“Every path but your own is the path of fate.”
-H. D. Thoreau, Walden
“We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.”
-H. D. Thoreau, Walden
“In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.”
-Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.”
-Herman Melville, Bartleyby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street
“On errands of life, these letters speed to death. Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”
-Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street
“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, Little Gidding, part V.
“Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.”
-Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
“Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life – he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free will, his free will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers – neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other – a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth.”
-Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
“No great discovery was ever made in science except by one who lifted his nose above the grindstone of details and ventured on a more comprehensive vision.”
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in Morris Cohen, the Meaning of Human History (1947)
“what remains is to break down the resistance to change”
-Julia Kristeva, Women’s Time.
Not from Books:
“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
–Simon Bolivar
“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
-François Rabelais
“Ya’ know what though, I don’t mind. I mean if my muscles ache, it’s because I’ve used ‘em. It’s hard for me to walk up them steps now, its ‘cuz I walked up ‘em every night to lay next to a man who loved me. I got a few wrinkles here and there, but I’ve laid under thousands of skies with sunny days. I look and feel this way, well cuz I drank and I smoked. I lived and I loved, danced, sang, sweat and screwed my way thorough a pretty damn good life if you ask me. Getting old ain’t bad Ben. Getting old, that’s earned.”
-The Guardian (2005)
“The important thing is this:
To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”
-Charles Edouard du Bois (1847-1885), an American Painter
“A lesson to be learned from this puzzle is that it is not necessarily the pieces which seem to fit satisfactorily that decide whether or not the picture to date is correct, it is the pieces which don’t fit that really decide the issue.”
-Peter Warlow, 1982, English Physicist & Author
“The origin of thinking is – perplexity.”
- John Dewey (1859-1952) American educator & Philosopher
“So don’t let anyone tell you you’re not worth the earth
These streets are your streets, this turf is your turf
Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve got to give in
‘cos you can make a difference, you can change everything
Just let your dreams be your pilot, your imagination your fuel
Tear up the book and write your own damn rules.”
- the King Blues, What if Punk Never Happened
“it is of the essence of a nation that all its individuals have lots of things in common that they have forgotten.”
-Ernest Renan
“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”
-Simon de Beauvoir, philosopher
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