Anthony Trollope (April 24, 1815 – December 06, 1882) A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules… There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.
Tao Writer On The Crushing Weight Of GoodBye
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) She told him what had kept her away was Death. But he rejected that excuse—for Death, he said, can never come between lovers. — Naguib Mahdouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) I never thought the last time we said, “Good bye,” would be the last time. If I …
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov On Wealth
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (January 29, 1860 – July 15, 1904) Yes, it is nice now in the country, not only nice but positively amazing. It’s real spring, the trees are coming out, it is hot. The nightingales are singing, and the frogs are croaking in all sorts of tones. I haven’t a halfpenny, but the …
Bertrand Russell On Fear, Religion, And God
Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) Fear is the basis of religious dogma, as of so much else in human life. Fear of human beings, individually or collectively, dominates much of our social life, but it is fear of nature that gives rise to religion. The antithesis of mind and matter is ... more …
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Alfred Lord Tennyson On Flower In The Crannied Wall
Alfred Lord Tennyson (August 06, 1809 – October 06, 1892) Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man …
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Milton Glaser On Thinking
Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929 -) My adventure has all been in my mind. The great adventure has been thinking. I love to think about things. I think that the lack of drama in my life has produced a platform for me to be fundamentally adventurous in my thinking.
James Baldwin On Segregation
James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is the price we pay for segregation. That’s what segregation means. You don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the wall, because you don’t want to know.
Ronald Reagan On The Economy
Ronald Reagan (February 06, 1911 - June 05, 2004) Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Annie Dillard On Writing
Annie Dillard (April 30, 1945 -) One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it …
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin On Wisdom
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 26, 1940) Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom. The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
Rebecca Solnit On Consumerism
Rebecca Solnit (June 24, 1961 -) There are times when it's clear to me that by getting and spending, we lay waste our powers, and times when, say, the apricot velvet headboard against the lavender wall of a room in an old hotel fills me with a mysterious satisfied pleasure in harmonies of color, texture, …
Erich Fromm On Love
Eric Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) Productive love always implies a syndrome of attitudes; that of care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. If I love, I care — that is, I am actively concerned with the other person’s growth and happiness; I am not a spectator. I am responsible, that is, I respond …
Sholem Aleichem On Life
Sholem Aleichem (March 2 – May 13, 1916) Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
Mary Oliver On Wild Geese
Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 - January 17, 2019) You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I …
Ochwiay Biano In Conversation With Carl Jung On Thinking
Ochwiay Biano, An Elder of the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico “See.” Ochwiay Biano said, “how cruel the whites looks. Their lips are thin and their noses are sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want …
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Pierre Trudeau On The Greater Good
Pierre Trudeau (October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000) I have never been able to accept any discipline except that which I impose upon myself — and there was a time when I use to impose it often. For, in the art of living, as in that of loving, or of governing — it is …
Jeanette Winterson On Time
Jeanette Winterson (August 27, 1959 -) I can see no reason to be bound by chronological time. As far as we know, the universe is not bound by it; as far as we know, it is yet another construct of ours, this worship of the clock and the idea that there is a past and …
Robert Harris On The Novel
Robert Harris (March 07, 1957 -) It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you’re forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.
Annemarie Roeper On Identity
Annemarie Roeper (August 27, 1918 – May 11, 2012) [We have] a sense of the mystery of life, the mystery of the universe that surrounds us, and the mystery that is within us. It is within these vast unknowns that we try to establish our identities. We strive to carve out a place that is …
Eugène Delacroix On Solitude
Eugène Delacroix (April 26, 1798–August 13, 1863) Everything tells me that I need to live a more solitary life. The loveliest and most precious moments of my life are slipping away in amusements which, in truth, bring me nothing but boredom...I must work alone. I think that going into society from time to time, or …
Herman Hess On Being
Hermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962) In each one of you there is a hidden being, still in the deep sleep of childhood. Bring it to life! In each one of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse toward the future, the new, the higher. Let …
Anne Lamott On Ritual
Anne Lamott (April 10, 1954 -) The search is the meaning, the search for beauty, love, kindness and restoration in this difficult, wired and often alien modern world. The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It …
Shunryū Suzuki On The Beginner’s Mind
Shunryū Suzuki (May 18, 1904 – December 4, 1971) In Japan we have the phrase Shoshin which means "beginner's mind." The goal of the practice is to always keep the beginner's mind. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually …
Mo Gawdat On Happiness
Mo Gawdat (June 20, 1967 -) Happiness is very much like staying fit. You start with the decision that you are going to get fit, you find out how – but knowing that is not enough, you have to go to the gym to work out and eat healthily. To me the whole topic of …
Rainer Maria Rilke On Encounters
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) Sometimes to someone lonely there comes something that works as a wondrous balm. It is not a sound, not even a voice. It is the smile of women - a smile, that, like the light of perished stars, is still on its way.
Toni Morrison On The Artist’s Task
Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 - August 05, 2019) I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence…This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place …
Raymond Carver On The Hotel Del Mayo
Raymond Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book. The man in the lobby using a broom. The boy in the lobby watering plants. The desk clerk looking at his nails. The woman in the lobby writing a letter. The old man in the lobby …
Emma Lazarus On Freedom
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Inscription on the base of the Statue Of Liberty from …
Ann Hamilton On Time
Ann Hamilton (June 22, 1956 -) Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between.
Bill Moyers On Democracy
Bill Moyers (June 5, 1934 -) We are moving toward an oligarchy society where a relatively small handful of the rich decide, with their money, who will run, who will win, and how they will govern. The defenders of the present system will fight hard to hold on to their privilege, and they write the …
Harold Maine On The Hour Of Man
Harold Maine aka Walker Winslow I want to see the radio and television turned off for an hour a week, the paper and magazines laid aside, the car locked safely in the garage, the bridge table folded, the liquor bottle corked, and the sedatives kept tightly in their packages. I want to see production and …
Iris Murdoch On Art And Philosophy
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 8, 1999) Both art and philosophy constantly re-create themselves by returning to the deep and obvious and ordinary things of human existence and making there a place for cool speech and wit and serious unforced reflection. Long may this central area remain to us, the homeland of freedom …
