#m

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it. ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#emotion #the-horror #experience

When you're in shape, you don't have to walk up to somebody and say, 'Yo, I love myself.' You look like you care for yourself. ↗

— Tyrese Gibson

#i #i love #like #look #love

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. ↗

— William Gibson

#any #bits #fragments #impossible #information

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. ↗

— William Gibson

#about #exactly #net #right #time

I've always been more afraid of being left alone or left out than of things that go bump in the night. ↗

— Nelson Gidding

#alone #always #been #being #bump

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress. ↗

— Andre Gide

#better #caress #considered #even #friends

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. ↗

— Andre Gide

#give #giving #only #possesses #possession

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself. ↗

— John Gielgud

#exhibiting #forget #glory #half #shame

A theme in a lot of my books - and in my own life - is making choices that you feel you should make, or what society wants you to make, as opposed to what is truly right for you. ↗

— Emily Giffin

#choices #feel #life #lot #make

The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall. ↗

— Mary Douglas

#black #black and white #build #inside #moral