#ding

I saw something I could never forget. I saw lifetimes of acknowledgement, fear, wisdom, questioning, and understanding in a child's eye. It was the worst thing I would ever witness. ↗

— Shannon A. Thompson

#fear #innocence #life-lessons #life-loss #questioning

When Benjamin Franklin, the famous inventor and publisher, was serving as the American ambassador to France, he often impressed French intellectual with the wisdom of his remarks. At one dinner, the question was raised, "What human condition deserves the most pity?" Each of the guests responded, but the answer that is still remembered is Benjamin Franklins's: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read. ↗

— Paul Kropp

#life

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#just #menaces #money #sophisticated #taxation

In film, you can have sad endings. ↗

— Anna Torv

#film #sad #you

We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off and we could like him to provide us with desires... That is the value of reading and is also its inadequacy. To make it into discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#life

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz ↗

— William L.K.

#kindle-books #science-fiction #short-story #worth-reading #science

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind tham lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#life

Fiction does something unique in that it takes us out of our heads and puts us into other people's heads. And I think reading, and experiencing fiction through reading, is something that gives us empathy. And that, I think, is vital. It takes us out of our lives. Without reading, you're stuck with one life. Reading gives you more than one life. It gives you an infinite number of lives, which I think is wonderful. Or at least, not infinite, but as many as there are books on the shelves. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#life

The story was clearly over, as in juggling when the ball you throw up finds the moment to come down, hesitates as if it might not, and then drops at the same speed of that celestial light. And life is no longer good but just what you happen to be holding. ↗

— E.L. Doctorow

#life #life

...my novels are like life - I never know where they're going until I get to the end... ↗

— John Geddes

#life #plot #purpose #life