#dual

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then is he caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#ethereal-tides #great-public-power #individual-man #intellect #life-of-the-universe

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#individuality #insight #issues #learning #life

You have two choices in life...Choice one is to be the same and be like everyone else...Choice two is to be yourself and be a difference-maker. ↗

— Jazlyn Roehl

#different #individuality #life #life

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me. ↗

— Charles Taylor

#individuals #life #self #uniqueness #life

On some such night as this she remembered promising to herself to live as brave and noble a life as any heroine she ever read or heard of in romance, a life sans peur et sans reproche; it had seemed to her then that she had only to will, and such a life would be accomplished. And now she had learnt that not only to will, but also to pray, was a necessary condition in the truly heroic. Trusting to herself, she had fallen. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#heroic #individual-will #noble #prayer #strength

Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#individuals #love #peace #love

See with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, think your own thoughts, say what you must say, do what you must do, love all that you can and stand on your own two feet. ↗

— Paul Palnik

#individuality #love

In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more. ↗

— Nora Raleigh Baskin

#love

An Individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices himself to others nor sacrifices others to himself; he deals with men as a trader - not as a looter; as a producer - not as a Attila. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#trader #men

Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#government #individual-worth #men