#life

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two? ↗

— David Byrne

#life #meaning #music #ocean #pleasure

A good river is nature's life work in song. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#river #song #life

Daylight fades away as I watch you. Darkness claims the sky and I wish you knew that nothing you can do can keep me from you. But I stay out of sight and only whisper to you. Words I can’t say. Words you don’t need to hear. Words I can’t keep from tangling my way. Now, I can’t stand alone. Now, I am under your influence. You’ve taken over me and Now, I can’t ignore what I’ve been shown. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care who knows. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care if it shows. I’m weakened and I’m strengthened in your arms. You’ve claimed me and I need to feel you close.” “You stand wanting more than you could ever understand. I stand helpless needing to give in to your every command. Wanting to see you smile has consumed me and tied both my hands. Nothing I offer could ever be worthy of your love. It’s a miracle that you saw me and never ran. I will spend my whole life trying to be the man you think I am.   Now, I can’t stand alone. Now, I am under your influence. You’ve taken over me and Now, I can’t ignore what I’ve been shown. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care who knows. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care if it shows. I’m weakened and I’m strengthened in your arms. You’ve claimed me and I need to feel you close.” “You hold fire within your gaze. It mesmerizes everyone you allow into your maze. I know nothing of your thoughts but I need to bask within the warmth of your rays. Nothing you do could ever be wrong. You’re forever perfect in every way.   Now, I can’t stand alone. Now, I am under your influence. You’ve taken over me and Now, I can’t ignore what I’ve been shown. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care who knows. You’ve claimed me and I don’t care if it shows. I’m weakened and I’m strengthened in your arms. You’ve claimed me and I need to feel you close.” ~ Dank ↗

— Abbi Glines

#life

Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#genes #patterns #temperments #thought #life

Thus her whole identity hangs in the balance of her love life. She is allowed to love herself only if a man finds her worthy of love. ↗

— Shulamith Firestone

#life

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. ↗

— John Cage

#zen #life

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#life

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger. ↗

— Ben Okri

#mythology #stories #storytelling #life

One should preach not from one's rational mind but rather from the heart. Only that which is from the heart can touch another heart. One must never attack or oppose anyone. If he who preaches must tell people to keep away from a certain kind of evil, he must do so meekly and humbly, with fear of God. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#eastern-orthodoxy #fear-of-god #humility #meekness #preaching

Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks a little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action. ↗

— Ramakrishna

#life