#ness

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? (Susan Barton) ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#others #philosophy #self-awareness #susan-barton #life

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#frailty #immortality #life #mortality #shortness-of-life

The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a Wilderness. ↗

— Havelock Ellis

#land #lies #other #promised #promised land

To die, he thought, was to escape passion's grasp, but that was the last thing he wanted. Instead he wished to be seized by passion and pinioned, held in its palm forever—he could not imagine any other existence as embracing any real happiness. ↗

— David Guterson

#happiness #passion #death

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue. ↗

— Brian Eno

#because #become #being #community #consciousness

What if I couldn't handle people's opinions of me? I know that shouldn't dictate a person's degree of peace or happiness in life, but the problem is, I chose a business saturated in judgment. ↗

— Chris Evans

#chose #degree #dictate #handle #happiness

The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#comes #europe #japan #lightness #new

I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. ↗

— Hugh Laurie

#happiness #i #never #someone #who

I was desperate really for people not to accuse me of coldness. It was taboo. ↗

— Thomas Dolby

#coldness #desperate #i #me #people

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man. ↗

— Ernst Fischer

#clear #efficient #greatness #imperfection #machines