#negation

I regret..." Tobias tilts his head, and sighs. "I regret my choice." "What Choice?" "Dauntless," he says. "I was born Abnegation. I was planning on leaving Dauntless, and becoming factionless. But I met her, and... I felt like maybe I could make something more of my decision." Her. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#dauntless #faction #love #romantic #tobias-eaton

No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation. ↗

— Knut Hamsun

#befall #entrenched #fate #man #negation

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things. ↗

— Salvatore Quasimodo

#being #desire #duplication #earth #even

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. ↗

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

#celibacy #convent #dignity #following #grief

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#adapt #exert #first #freedom #fruitful

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. ↗

— Gustave Courbet

#forms #ideal #negation #painting #realism

Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals. ↗

— Ivan Illich

#heals #health #human #human health #institution