#deter

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:) "[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone. We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#empowerment #freedom #friendship #independence #love

It seems kind of light for a dozen books. I think it's probably that unnatural number of Jason Statham DVDs you ordered." He has to have filmed a nude scene at some point in his career. I don't care how many shoot-'em-up action movies I have to watch, I will find it," I said solemnly. "Oh, yes, I will find it. ↗

— Molly Harper

#humor #humor

I can't believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it's only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated. ↗

— Beatrice Sparks

#physical-change #change

The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, mediated only secondarily by consciousness. Instinctive sexuality is at our core, interfering constantly with the life of the intellect. To be an individual expression of this will is to lead a life of continual desire, deficiency, and suffering. Pleasure or satisfaction exists only relative to a felt lack; it is negative, merely the cessation of an episode of striving or suffering, and has no value of itself. Nothing we can achieve by conscious act of will alters the will to life within us. There is no free will. Human actions, as part of the natural order, are determined [....] As individual parts of the empirical world we are ineluctably pushed through life by a force inside us which is not of our choosing, which gives rise to needs and desires we can never fully satisfy, and is without ultimate purpose. Schopenhauer concludes that it would have been better not to exist—and that the world itself is something whose existence we should deplore rather than celebrate. ↗

— Christopher Janaway

#desire #determinism #free-will #pleasure #satisfaction

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#self-determination #being

Owing to the difficulty of dealing with substances of high molecular weight we are still a long way from having determined the chemical characteristics and the constitution of proteins, which are regarded as the principal con-stituents of living organisms. ↗

— Karl Landsteiner

#chemical #constitution #dealing #determined #difficulty

I was a savage for so many years of my life. There was some seed of determination in me that I was not conscious of. I was mostly consciously getting into trouble and drunk. ↗

— Daniel Day-Lewis

#consciously #determination #drunk #getting #i

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. ↗

— Vince Lombardi

#best #dedication #determination #hand #hard

The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. ↗

— Herbert Marcuse

#chosen #decisive #degree #determining #factor

For me, everything is still possible and I am as determined as ever. I believe first that the project of a people does not die. It is the project of freedom for a people, it is a project of sovereignty. And since the nation exists, it has the right to its own state. I will work to advance it in that direction. ↗

— Pauline Marois

#am #believe #determined #die #direction