Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a weapon — a tool useful only in combat and self-defense…Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive …
Hermann Hesse On Listening
Hermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962) When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.
Terry Pratchett On Death
Terry Pratchett (April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015) No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the …
Tracy Kidder On the Truth
Tracy Kidder (November 12, 1945 -) In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer’s fundamental job is to make what is true believable.
Seneca On Life And Death
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD65) If nature should demand of us that which she has previously entrusted to us, we will also say to her: “Take back a better mind than you gave: I seek no way of escape nor flee: I have voluntarily improved for you what you gave me without my knowledge; …
Anne Sexton On Poetry
Anne Sexton November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that’s saying a lot.
Neil Young On Writing
Neil Young (November 12, 1945 -) Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn’t know what to do next.
Carl Sagan On Books
Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate — with the best teachers — the insights, painfully …
Rachel Carson On The Earth
Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907–April 14, 1964) The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife... Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics. 🌎 Earth Day 🌍
Adyashanti On Spirituality
Adyashanti (October 26, 1962 -) Spiritual autonomy is an invitation to step up to our incarnation, to say yes to it, and to realize our own potential, both for ourselves and for the sake of all beings.
Ben Franklin On Permanency
Ben Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Herman Melville On Meditation
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It …
PJ O’Rourke On Humor
PJ O’Rourke (November 14, 1947 -) The source of the word ‘humorist’ is one who regards human beings in terms of their humors — you know, whether they’re sanguine or full of yellow bile, or whatever the four classical humors are. You stand back from people and regard them as types. And one finds, especially …
Julāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī On To Live
Julāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (September 30, 1207 – December 17, 1273) Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread to a small place that fits like a nest around him, someone who wants no more, who’s not himself longed for by anyone else, He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, …
Marianne Moore On Poetry
Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) I never knew anyone with a passion for words who had as much difficulty in saying things as I do. I seldom say them in a manner I like. Each poem I think will be the last. But something always comes up and catches my …
Abraham Lincoln On Equality And Government
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so …
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Oliver Sacks On Creativity
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to …
May Sarton On Poets
May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) You choose to be a novelist, but you're chosen to be a poet. This is a gift and it's a tremendous responsibility. You have to be willing to give something terribly intimate and secret of yourself to the world and not care, because you have to believe that …
Katharine Weber On Loss
Katharine Weber (November 12, 1955 -) Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That’s the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what’s left, that’s the part you have to make up as you go.
Baruch Spinoza On Understanding
Baruch Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
WEB Du Bois On Racism
William Edward Burghardt " W. E. B. " Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others—shut out from their world by a vast veil. For the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. …
Margaret Atwood On Writing
Margaret Atwood (November 18, 1939 -) You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is …
Robert Pinsky On Art And Poetry
Robert Pinsky (October 20, 1940 -) Poetry takes care of itself. All art does — that is paramount. In a survival race, I’m quite sure poetry will long outlast reality TV and Twitter.
Sam Nunberg On Politics
Sam Nunberg (June 21, 1981 -) The misconception is that the president (Trump) does not know what he does not know. In my experience, the reality is that the president knows what he does not know and does not think he needs to know it.
Maria Mitchell On Awareness
Maria Mitchell (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing...Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned, …
Frank Ostaseski On Birth-Death
Frank Ostaseski In Japanese Zen, the term shoji translates as “birth-death.” There is no separation between life and death other than a small hyphen, a thin line that connects the two. We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. …
Maya Angelou, Martin L King On Evil And Injustice
Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, oftentimes in the name of good. 🎂Happy Birthday Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) In Memoriam🌹 Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) Injustice anywhere is a threat …
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Leslie Jonath On Poetry
Leslie Jonath The beauty of a great poem is that it gives language to an emotion that we’re unable to express otherwise. I can’t think of another art form where words are the medium to crystallize the depths of our emotional life. Poetry at its best makes us feel understood.
Dorothy Day On Change
Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, …
Mary Oliver On Life
Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 -) In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to …
