Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer — or my life, period — would not have become what it is: …
Adrienne Rich On Human Relationships
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March 27, 2012) An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word ‘love’ — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
Pablo Picasso On Passions
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 08, 1973) To my distress and perhaps to my delight, I order things in accordance with my passions…I put in my pictures everything I like. So much the worse for the things — they have to get along with one another.
Henry David Thoreau On Self Care
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) I am convinced that to maintain one’s self care on this earth is not a hardship but a pass time, if we will live simply and wisely.
Randy Pausch On Dreams
Randy Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) My uniqueness, I realized, came in the specifics of all the dreams — from incredibly meaningful to decidedly quirky — that defined my forty-six years of life. Sitting there, I knew that despite the cancer, I truly believed I was a lucky man because I had …
William James On Mystical States
William James (January 11, 1842–August 26, 1910) Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; …
Jean-Luc Picard On Time
Jean-Luc Picard Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives but I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as …
Marcus Tullius Cicero On Laws
Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 03, 106 BC – December 07, 43 BC) Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved…To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.
Joan Didion On Living
Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 -) I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in …
Genevieve Dewar on Human Nature
Genevieve Dewar It’s very rare that humans like to sit still and do nothing and maintain stasis. While we love what we know and we do want to maintain it, I think all of us would love to make the world a more interesting place and a more useful place, and be able to do …
Donald Andrew Hall On Writing
Donald Andrew Hall Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) The great pleasure of being a writer is in the act of writing, and surely there is some pleasure in being published and being praised. I don’t mean to be complacent about what I have some of. But the greater pleasure is in the …
Mike Parr On Art
Mike Parr If you’re going to start consulting with people in order to do an artwork, how does that end? That’s not responsible political art. It’s populist. You’re trying to be all things for all people.
Roger Angell On Aging
Roger Angell (September 19, 1920 -) I’ve endured a few knocks but missed worse. I know how lucky I am, and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds. The pains and insults are bearable. My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve …
Seneca On Giving
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) The wise man… enjoys the giving more than the recipient enjoys the receiving… None but the wise man knows how to return a favour. Even a fool can return it in proportion to his knowledge and his power; his fault would be a lack of knowledge rather than …
CS Lewis On Self Consciousness
Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a "self," can exist except in contrast with an "other," a something which is not the self. . . . The freedom of a creature must mean freedom to …
Swami Vivekananda On Mind
Swami Vivekananda (January 1863 – July 04, 1902) Every work that we do... every thought that we think, leaves such an impression on the mind-stuff...
Maria Popova On Love
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) To love every fiber of another’s being with every fiber of your own is a rare, beautiful, and thoroughly disorienting experience — one which the term in love feels too small to hold. Its fact becomes a gravitational center of your emotional universe so powerful that the curvature of …
Yuan-Sou On Subtleness
Yuan-Sou On Subtleness The mountains, rivers, earth, grasses, trees, and forests are always emanating a subtle precious light, day and night, always emanating a subtle precious sound, demonstrating and expounding to all people the unsurpassed ultimate truth. The more you run, the further away you are, and the more you hurry, the later you become.
Pythagoras On Philosophers
Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC) Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself. He seeks to uncover the secrets of nature. This is …
Anaïs Nin On Writing
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
Eduardo Porter On Social Dysfunction
Eduardo Porter The United States is one of the richest, most technologically advanced nations in the history of humanity. And yet it accepts — proudly defends, even — a degree of social dysfunction that would be intolerable in any other rich society.
Mary Oliver On One Or Two Things
Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 -) 1 Don’t bother me. I’ve just been born. 2 The butterfly’s loping flight carries it through the country of the leaves delicately, and well enough to get it where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping here and there to fuzzle the damp throats of flowers and the …
Audre Lorde On Acceptable Women
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that …
Terry Tempest Williams On Aggression
Terry Tempest Williams (September 08, 1955 -) The irony of our existence is this: We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites. We multiply, our …
Christof Koch On Freedom
Christof Koch (November 13, 1956 -) Freedom is always a question of degree rather than an absolute good that we do or do not possess.
Howard Washington Thurman On Your Inner Voice
Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days …
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Adyashanti On Love
Adyashanti (October 26, 1962 -) To be loving isn’t to be perfect — it’s to be connected and warm with both ourselves and others. It’s to be residing in the humble heart.
Jack Kerouac On Death
Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a …
Jeanette Winterson On Language
Jeanette Winterson (August 27, 1959 -) For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the words with which to express something, you are no longer incoherent, you are no longer trapped by your own emotions, by your own experiences; you can describe them, you can tell them, you can bring them …
Teilhard de Chardin On Love
Teilhard de Chardin (May 01, 1881 – April 10, 1955) Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire.
Ursula K Le Guin On Old Age
Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) If you eat your sardines and leafy greens and wear SPF 150 and develop your abs and blabs and slabs or whatever they are in order to live a long life, that’s good, and maybe it will work. But the longer a life …
