#ness

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add — until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#writing #life

Be like a branch of a tree; flex your body to face 'wind of sorrow'; flex little harder to dance in the 'wind of happiness'. ↗

— Santosh Kalwar

#happiness #life #sorrow #tree #life

That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space. ↗

— Vladimir Bartol

#emptiness #faith #freedom #inspirational #life

Ellen's life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy, that was woman's lot. It was a man's world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious and forgiving. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#kindness #men #women #forgiveness

Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. ↗

— Judith Butler

#loneliness-as-a-way-of-life #life

It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there, it is part of us. ↗

— Carlos María Domínguez

#life #moments #need #soul #witnesses

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric. ↗

— A.C. Grayling

#society #life

As soon as you stop making everyone else responsible for your happiness, the happier you’ll be. ↗

— Nina Guilbeau

#peace #self-esteem #spiritual-growth #life

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. ↗

— Yann Martel

#fearless #fearlessness #life #life

Sometimes you need to be alone in order to reflect on life. Take time out to take care of yourself. You deserve it. ↗

— Robert Tew

#life-quote #lonely #quotes #quotes-to-live-by #self-worth