#ness

I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#love #oneness #will #equality

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm. ↗

— Criss Jami

#conceal #equality #evil #expose #good

It's quite commonplace for a young man to fall in love and equally commonplace for him to be rejected, but come what may, I'll always be fond of you. ↗

— Margaret Way

#heartbreak #heartbroken #love #men #rejection

Quite possibly, the purpose of the universe is to provide a congenial home for self-conscious creatures who can ask profound questions and who can probe the nature of the universe itself. ↗

— Owen Gingerich

#profundity #purpose #self-consciousness #universe #home

And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#analysis #character #darkness #insight #intuition

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#dreams

I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness. ↗

— Robert Bly

#tenderness #humans

...a dream isn't a wish - it's an altered state of consciousness ... ↗

— John Geddes

#state-of-consciousnesssness #wishes #dreams

Survival is an ancient dream Life is nothing but an everlasting illusion Nothing is Real Don’t believe in illusion, Remember me, I am here … ↗

— Rixa White

#believe-in-illusion #emptiness #empty #everlasting-illusion #illusion

Life is not interested in good and evil. Don Quixote was constantly choosing between good and evil, but then he was choosing in his dream state. He was mad. He entered reality only when he was so busy trying to cope with people that he had no time to distinguish between good and evil. Since people exist only in life, they must devote their time simply to being alive. Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move—which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream. ↗

— William Faulkner

#good-and-evil #life #morality #business