Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) If America is the culmination of Western white civilization, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilization. This is a painful truth; few of us want to go that far.... The truth is that …
Teresita Fernández On Art
Teresita Fernández (May 12, 1968 -) Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth... will also become the raw material for …
Victor Hugo On Thanksgiving
Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
May Sarton On Being A Poet
May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) I am, I think, more of a poet..., if to be a poet means allowing life to flow through one rather than forcing it into a mold the will has shaped: if it means learning to let the day shape the work, not the work, the …
Jane Ebihara On The Last Kiss
A Kiss is still…an osculatory apposition of the orbicularis oris and levator labii muscles with posterior involvement of the sternocleidomastoids, commonly in a dexterous orientation. — Onur Gunturkun of Ruhr Jane Ebihara First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those who count such things say an average person kisses for a total of …
Maria Popova On Solitude And Loneliness
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) There is, of course, a universe of difference between solitude and loneliness — two radically different interior orientations toward the same exterior circumstance of lacking companionship. We speak of “fertile solitude” as a developmental achievement essential for our creative capacity, but loneliness is barren and destructive; it cottons in …
Oscar Wilde On Triviality
Oscar Fingal Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) We should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
Sam Harris On Spirit
Sam Harris (April 09, 1967 -) We seem to do little more than lurch between wanting and not wanting. Thus, the question naturally arises: Is there more to life than this? Might it be possible to feel much better (in every sense of better) than one tends to feel? Is it possible to find lasting …
Albert Camus On Understanding
Albert Camus (November 07, 1913 – January 04, 1960) In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish. To do so, certain conditions must be fulfilled: men must be frank (falsehood confuses things), free …
Alain de Botton On Human Nature
Alain de Botton (December 20, 1969 -) My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways — and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.
Albert Schweitzer On Gratitude
Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875 – September 04, 1965) To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for …
Richard Dawkins On Living
Richard Dawkins (March 26, 1941 -) The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realize that before you die, …
Jan Swafford On Genius
Jan Swafford (September 10, 1946 -) Genius is something that lies on the other side of talent… Talent is largely inborn, and in a given field some people have it to a far higher degree than others. Still, in the end talent is not enough to push you to the highest achievements. Genius has to …
Jack Weinberg On Freedom
Jack Weinberg (April 04, 1940 -) But I think that American society is much better off today than it was in the ’50s when there was very little freedom of any kind. Unless you were dressed the right way and spoke the right way and thought the right way, you were marginalized.
James Matsumoto Omura On Internment And Racism
James Matsumoto Omura (November 27, 1912 - June 20, 1994) We are all under suspicion. We are all being observed…We know we have nothing to conceal, but this does not preclude the fact that people living around us may not know it.
Vincent Van Gogh On The Soul
Vincent Van Gogh (March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890) Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.
Ann Hamilton On The Possibilities Of Art
Ann Hamilton (June 22, 1956 -) One doesn’t arrive — in words or in art — by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. You may set out for …
Wendell Berry On A Questionnaire
Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) 1 How much poison are you willing 2 to eat for the success of the free 3 market and global trade? Please 4 name your preferred poisons. 5 For the sake of goodness, how much 6 evil are you willing to do? 7 Fill in the following blanks 8 …
Katie Hill On Double Standards
Katie Hill (August 25, 1987 -) The forces of revenge by a bitter jealous man, cyber exploitation and sexual shaming that target our gender and a large segment of society that fears and hates powerful women have combined to push a young woman out of power and say that she doesn’t belong here… Yet a …
Charles Dickens On Abstractions
Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 07, 1812 – June 09, 1870) It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was …
Nikki Giovanni On Love
Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 -) The night loves the stars as they play about the darkness … the day loves the light caressing the sun … We love … those who do … because we live in a world requiring light and darkness … partnership and solitude … sameness and difference … the familiar …
John Updike On Death
John Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) Each person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time.
Hafez On God
Hafez (1315 - 1390) Slipping on my shoes, boiling water, toasting bread, buttering the sky: that should be enough contact with God in one day to make anyone crazy.
Howard Roger Garis On Thinking
Howard Roger Garis (April 25, 1873 – November 6, 1962) Half the fun of nearly everything, you know, is thinking about it beforehand, or afterward.
Abraham Lincoln On History And Judgement
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me …
Guy Fawkes On The Fifth Of November
Guy Fawkes (April 13,1570 – January 31, 1606) Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot; I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot! English Folk Verse (c.1870) But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know in 1605, he attempted …
Iris Murdoch On Tyrants And Art
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth, he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored. The tyrant persecutes the …
Mary Oliver On Responsibility
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
James Baldwin On Death
James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will …
John O’Donohue On Memory
John O’Donohue (January 1, 1956 – January 4, 2008) Memory is always quietly at work, gathering and interweaving experience. Memory is the place where our vanished lives secretly gather. For nothing that happens to us is ever finally lost or forgotten. In a strange way, everything that happens to us remains somehow still alive within …
Patty Smith On Tomorrow
Patricia Lee Smith (December 30, 1946 -) This is what I know. Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. And my dog who was dead in 1957 is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is …
