#life

I have come to the conclusion that women believe marriage is proof that they have worth. It is the ultimate game of choosing sides for teams. It is hard to be picked last, but not to be chosen at all is unbearable - especially if you know that you are a good player and can help the team. Not only are you excluded but you also have to stay around and watch the game. ↗

— Kristen McMain Oaks

#religious #true-to-life #life

I would that I could have stopped time and preserved that day forever. It was a perfect day. There was the shadow of sorrow, yes. It would always be there. But that was the nature of life. The bright mirror and the dark, reflecting one another. And today there was so much brightness. ↗

— Jacqueline Carey

#life

Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#superman #will-to-power #life

Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first. ↗

— Voltaire

#life

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

I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones. ↗

— Bruce Chatwin

#patagonia #life

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life's the other way round. ↗

— David Lodge

#life

As I was walking up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away. ↗

— Hugh Mearns

#philosphy #life

Life life to the fullest, and focus on the positive. ↗

— Matt Cameron

#life

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#objectivism #philosophy #taggart #life