May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) If I were in solitary confinement, I'd never write another novel, and probably not keep a journal, but I'd write poetry, because poems, you see, are between God and me.
Alejandra Pizarnik On Melancholia
Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason …
Martin L King On Viet Nam
Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, …
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein On Language
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
John Muir On The Earth
John Muir (April 21, 1838–December 24, 1914) Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!
Thich Nhat Hahn On Love And Presence
Thich Nhat Hanh (October 11, 1926 -) Your presence is a miracle, your understanding of his or her pain is a miracle, and you are able to offer this aspect of your love immediately. Really try to be there, for yourself, for life, for the people you love. Recognize the presence of those who live …
Susan Minot On Dysfunction
Susan Minot (December 07, 1956 -) The word dysfunction has, I think, served its purpose and now has lost its meaning. Every family, like every person, is imperfect, after all. The idea that there is a Family somewhere who functions is an odd concept. In my youth I was running from my family to try …
Barack Obama On Hope And Joy
Barack Obama (August 04 1961 -) I think whether you’re talking about art or politics or just getting up in the morning and trying to live your life, it’s useful to be able to seek out that joy where you can find it and operate on the basis of hope rather than despair.
Pearl S Buck On Living In A Double World
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) I grew up in a double world, the small white clean Presbyterian American world of my parents and the big, loving, merry, not too clean Chinese world, and there was no communication between them. When I was in the Chinese world, I was Chinese. I …
Martha Nussbaum On Love And Suffering
Martha Nussbaum (May 06, 1047 -) The alternations between love and its denial, suffering and denial of suffering … constitute the most essential and ubiquitous structural feature of the human heart. In suffering we know only suffering. We call our rationalizations false and delusive, and we do not see to what extent they express a …
Albert Schweitzer On The Question
Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875 – September 04, 1965) To the question whether I am a pessimist of an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.
Jeremy Bentham On Laws
Jeremy Bentham (February 15, 1748 - February 04, 1747) Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils.
Maria Popova On Emotional Generosity
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) And yet one of the most damning paradoxes of our condition is that, again and again, we withhold from others the loving sympathy and empathic understanding we demand for ourselves. When we lose the reins of our own character, when we lash out or sulk or act from a …
Nelson Mandela On Freedom
Nelson Mandela (July 18, 1918 – December 05, 2013) The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue… We have waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait. Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts… I have fought against white …
Primo Levi On Monsters
Primo Levi (July 31, 1919–April 11, 1987) Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are [those] ready to believe and act without asking questions.
Kahlil Gibran On Solitude And Silence
Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape. And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves …
James Joyce On Ulysses
James Augustine Joyce (February 02, 1882 – January 13, 1941) Opening Paragraph of Ulysses "O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and …
Keith Allen Haring On Art
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) That was the whole intention of the art: to affect and enter the culture by understanding and reflecting it; to contribute to and broaden the concept of art and the artist as much as possible.
Albert Einstein On Intuitive Mind
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Lucy Stone On Women Liberationist
Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) We want to be something more than the appendages of Society; we want that Woman should be the coequal and help-meet of Man in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life. We want that she should attain to the development of her nature …
George Bernard Shaw On Life
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 – November 02, 1950) I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want …
Meshell Ndegeocello On Books And Reading
Meshell Ndegeocello (August 29, 1968 -) You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever …
Megan Rapinoe On Choice
Megan Rapinoe (July 05, 1985 -) But you have a choice of what you do in the world. You just have to be prepared to wear the consequences of your actions.
Oscar-Claude Monet On Unhappiness
Oscar-Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 05, 1926) I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf… To think I was getting on so well, more absorbed than I've ever been and expecting to achieve something, but I was forced to change my tune and give up a lot of promising beginnings and …
Simone de Beauvoir On The Past And The Present
Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986) We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. There have been war, plague, scandal, and treason, and there is no way of our preventing their having taken place; the executioner became an executioner and …
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Andrew Carnegie On Wealth
Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money.
William Vogt On Environmental Destiny
William Vogt (May 15, 1902–July 11, 1968) If we ourselves do not govern our destiny, firmly and courageously, no one is going to do it for us. To regain ecological freedom for our civilization will be a heavy task. It will frequently require arduous and uncomfortable measures. It will cost considerable sums of money. Democratic …
Bertrand Russell On Critical Thinking
Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social …
Alan Watts On Time
Alan Wilson Watts (January 06, 1915 – November 16, 1973) Time is an artificial concept… Our concept of time is the hairline second hand of a watch. We believe that the hairline is now. The now is eternal. Time is the eternal now. It is not a journey. It is NOW!
Anne Lamott On Connection
Anne Lamott (April 10, 1954 -) Most of us have figured out that we have to do what’s in front of us and keep doing it… Every time we choose the good action or response, the decent, the valuable, it builds, incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice…When you love something like …
