#lie

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935) ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#artists #falsification #gain #greed #honesty

I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You’re alive. And you stand up and see the lights and the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song in that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear… we are infinite. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#infinite #inspirational #life #perks #perks-of-being-a-wallflower

Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies. ↗

— Anne Rice

#truth #life

Yet rather than calling the earliest religions, which embraced such an open acceptance of all human sexuality, 'fertility cults,' we might consider the religions of today as strange in that they seem to associate shame and even sin with the very process of conceiving new human life. Perhaps centuries from now scholars and historians will be classifying them as 'sterility cults. ↗

— Merlin Stone

#goddess #pagan #religion #religions #sexuality

We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do, the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn't work that way at all. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#common-sense #truth #universe #way-of-life #life

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via. That's my philosophy. Its a quote from the past. "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. ↗

— Cecil Castellucci

#life #ways #life

Sometime, somewhere, life always comes to a fight, and peace always comes to an end. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#caine #fighting #life #morganville #morganville-vampires

I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid. ↗

— Lois Lowry

#alone #belonging #jonah #life #lois-lowry

We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#lies #life #schizophrenia #truth #life

When people stargazing, they stare at stars, and many other things which they've already presumed commonly and universally as stars. ↗

— Toba Beta

#civilization #life #sky #space #star