#ali

Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#feelings #reality #imagination

if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. ↗

— Norton Juster

#fantasy #fiction #humor #illusions #imaginary

She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#pornography #sarah-palin #sex-appeal #imagination

The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own. ↗

— Heraclitus

#life #reality #imagination

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets? ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#jeanette-winterson #reality #sexing-the-cherry #imagination

There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault. ↗

— John Gower

#clichés #deceit #delusion #discrimination #double-standards

What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that. ↗

— Mark Vonnegut

#reality #imagination

My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#immortality #life #death

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#double-standards #gender #hypocrisy #immorality #men

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings. ↗

— Edward W. Said

#imagination