#ding

It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one. ↗

— Karl A. Menninger

#religion

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#religion #understanding #religion

Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation. ↗

— Chögyam Trungpa

#defending #duality #fighting #good-and-evil #good-vs-evil

The Bible is a book of Science. Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology. ↗

— Michael J. Findley

#ancient-governments #culture #establishment-of-religion #history #non-fiction

Reading is accumulating knowledge. But not only that. Reading offers us every day what religion promises us for a posthumous and improbable future: the possibility of living beyond what our lifetime allows us to. ↗

— Camilo Gomes Jr.

#meaning #reading #religion #religion

Până și lectura are o funcție mitologică, nu numai pentru că înlocuiește rostirea miturilor în societățile arhaice și literatura orală, care se mai păstrează în comunitățile rurale din Europa, ci mai ales pentru că îi permite omului midern o „ieșire din timp”, asemănătoare cu cea înlesnită de mituri (...) omul modern este proiectat, prin lectură, în afara duratei sale personale și integrat altor ritmuri, trăind într-o altă „istorie”. ↗

— Mircea Eliade

#myth #reading #nature

In my living room there are two large bookcases, each one eight feet tall, and they have about five hundred books between them. If I step up to a shelf and look at the books one by one, I can remember something about each. As a historian once said, some stare at me reproachfully, grumbling that I have never read them. One may remind me vaguely of a time when I was interested in romantic novels. An old college text will elicit a pang of unhappiness about studying. Each book has its character, and even books I know very well also have this kind of wordless flavor. Now if I step back from the shelf and look quickly across both bookcases I speed up that same process a hundredfold. Impressions wash across my awareness. But each book still looks back in its own way, answering the rude brevity of my gaze, calling faintly to me out of the corner of my eye. At that speed many books remain wrapped in the shadows of my awareness--I know I have looked past them and I know they are there, but I refuse to call them to mind. ↗

— James Elkins

#bookshelves #looking #reading #nature

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences. ↗

— John Irving

#relationships #romantic

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#novels #reading #science

You're my hero," he murmured. She grinned up at him. "What a coincidence. You're _my_ hero. ↗

— Stephanie Bond

#romantic-mystery #romantic