#co

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived. ↗

— Frederick Buechner

#remembering #remembrance #consciousness

Stripping the protection wards off the ship was bad enough—it's a strong, strong enchantment, demon-based—but when you fell, I had to put a fast spell on the truck so it wouldn't sink when I lost consciousness. And I will lose consciousness, Alec. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#magnus-bane #spell #consciousness

When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this easily managed. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#compassion #consciousness

But no, I don't really like romantic comedies, so I don't really care. I never go see 'em. ↗

— John Cusack

#comedies #go #i #like #never

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story. ↗

— Charles Baxter

#discovery #fiction #mystery #overdetermination #perfection

the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#fate #self-discovery #understanding #destiny

If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy. ↗

— Criss Jami

#happiness #happy #inconsiderate #peace #problem

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#animal-rights #animals #compassion #duty

In Africa we having a saying, 'If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.' ...Before I go back home, I want you to consider us, Katie. Ponder what it would be like if we went together. Not alone and fast but together and far. ↗

— Robin Jones Gunn

#coming #eli #gunn #jones #katie

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me. ↗

— Chris Abani

#humanity #world #africa