#gh

It's not being a woman I mind so much," she said slowly. "'Tis the way men seem to always order my life." She leaned earnestly toward him. "Your hand, Papa, has wielded a sword and cradled a child and held power over hundreds of men." She held up her own hand. "This one has far fewer adventures before it. ↗

— Barbara Samuel

#hands #women #women-s-rights #women-s-strength #life

She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle. ↗

— Banana Yoshimoto

#life

To be happy, make others happy. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#find-happiness #happiness #happiness-life #happy #happy-feelings

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die ↗

— Natsuo Kirino

#sad #thought-provoking #life

If Henry Adams, whom you knew slightly, could make a theory of history by applying the second law of thermodynamics to human affairs, I ought to be entitled to base one on the angle of repose, and may yet. There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you -- a train, say, or the future -- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn't I look forward to yours. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#life #life

I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You had to be lost, before you could be found. These are the truths. You had to be confused, before you could find clarity; you had to suffer, before you could find peace. These were the only ways, life could happen. Of course you were confused before you found clarity. If you weren't confused, then you would already be clear. Of course you were lost before you were found. If you were already found, then you wouldn't be lost. Of course there would be suffering before peace. If there was already peace, then there wouldn't be suffering. One necessarily came before the other. ↗

— T. Scott McLeod

#buddhism #confusion #enlightenment #finding-one-s-way #meditation

How is your book doing?" or "How many copies have you sold?" are the questions for a salesman. To a writer, you better ask "What did you write today?". ↗

— Shubham Choudhary

#fact #writing-life #life

If you desire the path of sincerity, develop a love for obscurity. Flee from the clatter and clinks of fame. Be like the roots of a tree; it keeps the tree upright and gives it life, but it itself is hidden underneath the earth and eyes cannot see it. ↗

— Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak

#clinks #earth #eyes #fame #flee

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. ↗

— Sebastian Junger

#army #combat #life #marine-corps #military

Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you...you were born to fight tyranny. ↗

— Seth Grahame-Smith

#purpose-of-life #life