Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming …
Paulo Coelho On Risks
Paulo Coelho de Souza (August 24, 1947 - ) You have to take risks,” he said. “We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day God gives us the sun - and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes …
Marilynne Robinson On Sundays
Marilynne Summers Robinson (November 26, 1943 -) Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it.
Keith Allen Haring On Individual Creativity
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) It has been a long time since I have written anything down. A lot of things have happened. So many things I have been unable to write them. . . . In one year my art has taken me to Europe and propelled me into …
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Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin) On Originality
Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999) I deny that there is such a thing as originality. All an artist can do is bring his personality to bear. If he is true to himself, he can't help but be different, even unique, for no two persons are alike. I do not strive …
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Francoise Giroud On Death
Françoise Giroud (September 21, 1916 – January 19, 2003) To live several lives, you have to die several deaths.
Viktor Frankl On Living
Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) Who can weigh the ballast of another’s woe, or another’s love? We live — with our woes and our loves, with our tremendous capacity for beauty and our tremendous capacity for suffering — counterbalancing the weight of existence with the irrepressible force of living. The question, always, is …
Eric Carle On Seeing
Eric Carle (June 25, 1929 -) We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.
Chinua Achebe On Intrusions
Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930 - March 21, 2013) The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on …
Buddha On Death
Siddhārtha Gautama (c. 563/480 – c. 483/400) All things that are born must die. Work hard for your own freedom from suffering.
Barbara Kingsolver On Writers
Barbara Kingsolver (April 8, 1955 -) What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do, is re-engage people with their own humanity. Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
Franz Kafka On Letter Writing
Franz Kafka (July 03, 1883 – June 03, 1924) Letter writing is an intercourse with ghosts, not only with the ghost of the receiver, but with one's own, which emerges between the lines of the letter being written. … Written kisses never reach their destination, but are drunk en route by these ghosts.
Bertrand Russell On Fanaticism
Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) Fanaticism is the danger of the world. It always has been and has done untold harm. I think fanaticism is the greatest danger there is. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.
Anne Lamott On Perfectionism
Anne Lamott (April 10, 1954 -) There’s a whole chapter on perfectionism in Bird by Bird, because it is the great enemy of the writer, and of life, our sweet messy beautiful screwed up human lives. It is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you very scared and restless your entire life if …
Hagai El-Ad On Israel’s Apartheid
Hagai El-Ad (October 01, 1969 -) One cannot live a single day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish people. Yet half of those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Palestinian. The chasm between these lived …
Lucile Aurore Dupin (George Sand) On Understanding
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (George Sand) (July 01, 1804 – June 08, 1876) The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.
Manly Hall On The Secret Teachings
Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) I felt strongly moved to explore the problems of humanity, its origin and destiny, and I spent a number of quiet hours in the New York Public Library tracing the confused course of civilization... Translations of classical authors could differ greatly, but in most cases …
Albert Einstein On Intuition
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Alain Badiou On Love
Alain Badiou (January 17, 1937 -) Love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, because it is a construction. The enigma in thinking about love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isn’t the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable. The latter are clearly ecstatic, but love is …
Anaïs Nin On Relationships
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) It is not the failed relationships which influence our life — they influence our death.
Andrea Barrett On Writing And Science
Andrea Barrett (November 16, 1954 -) I think science and writing are utterly the same thing. They are completely rooted in passion and desire, if they’re any good at all. You can fall in love with the natural world in the same way you fall in love with a person. There’s that same sense of …
Gabriel García Márquez On Memory
Gabriel García Márquez (March 06, 1927 – April 17, 2014) Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Opening Line From One Hundred Years of Solitude
Leonardo Da Vinci On Flying
Leonardo Da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 02, 1519) Once you have flown, you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return.
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein On Philosophy
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
Maria Popova On Love
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) Great loves, like great works of art, live at the crossing point of the improbable and the inevitable. That, at least, has been my experience, both as a scholar of history and as a private participant in the lives of the heart. Such loves come unbidden, without warning or …
Samantha Heintzelman On Habits
Samantha Heintzelman But it’s mundane routines that give us structure to help us pare things down and better navigate the world, which helps us make sense of things and feel that life has meaning.
Martin L King On The Ultimate Test
Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy.
Lewis Thomas On Healing
Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3,1993) The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.
Alfred Adler On Principles
Alfred Adler (February 07, 1870 – May 28, 1937) It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Alan Watts On Religion
Alan Wilson Watts (January 06, 1915 – November 16, 1973) All religious beliefs are obstacles to our own transcendence as every form of belief is an attempt to cling… Religious beliefs are merely fantasies designed to prevent our own mortality. The highest religion is non-religion.
Rebeca Solnit On The Pandemic
Rebecca Solnit (June 24, 1961 -) The pandemic is a spotlight that illuminates underlying problems – economic inequality, racism, patriarchy. Taking care of each other begins with understanding the differences. And when the virus has slowed or stopped, all these problems will still need to be addressed. They are the chronic illnesses that weaken us …
Olivia Laing On Loneliness
Olivia Laing (April 14, 1977 -) Loneliness isn’t the same thing as solitude, nor is it solitude’s inevitable consequence. As Hopper’s painting (Nighthawks) demonstrates, it can arise just as easily in situations of proximity. You can be lonely in a crowd, lonely in a marriage — or, on the other hand, content and at ease …
John Berryman On Being A Writer
John Berryman (October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.
