#lit

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#love

My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people. ↗

— Dusty Springfield

#i #i think #me #never #other

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#family #fathers #love #parents #equality

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love. ↗

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

#spirituality #love

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#isolation #loneliness #personality #solitude #love

In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#drinking #forget #forgetting #love #personality

Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end and only might is right. ↗

— T.H. White

#love

When I left SEIU, we had started this quality public service agenda to say to our members what I think the United Auto Workers learned: that quality is our only job security in the long run. ↗

— Andy Stern

#auto #had #i #i think #job

I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”. ↗

— Frida Kahlo

#reality #love

So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#people #solitude #dreams