#iving

The best way to be appreciative for your life is to live it; don't die for any other reason but love. Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way. ↗

— Mike Norton

#appreciation #dark #death #die #dream

Living is about clucking your tongue and enjoying the sound. ~Slater ↗

— Ted Dekker

#living #slater #humor

Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief. Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul. For the human species, selfishness is extinction. Is this the doom written within our nature? If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe that leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword. A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. ↗

— David Mitchell

#humanity #life-and-living #life

Prudence's flat was in the kind of block where Jane imagined people might be found dead, though she had never said this to Prudence herself; it seemed rather a macabre fancy and not one to be confided to an unmarried woman living alone. ↗

— Barbara Pym

#imagination

No one is indispensable to anyone else. You imagine you're necessary to him or that he will be very unhappy if you leave him, but I'm sure that if you do, within three months he will have fitted another face into your role and you'll see that no one is suffering because of your absence. You must feel free to do whatever feels best to you. Being someone's nurse is no way to live unless you're unable to do anything else. You have to say something on your own and you ought to be thinking, first and foremost, about that. ↗

— Françoise Gilot

#living-for-oneself #imagination

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#giving-others-space #love #manners #self-care #self-confidence

What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christian-living #christianity #gift #god #inspirational

The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it's gone. ↗

— Rumi

#living #inspirational

To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little. ↗