#ny

[...] almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of 'psst' that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#destiny

Affliction is often that thing which prepares an ordinary person for some sort of an extraordinary destiny. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#wisdom #destiny

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#happiness #service #destiny

Unity! Duty! And destiny! ↗

— Greg Farshtey

#destiny #duty #unity #vakama #unity

I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself--that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#beer #cambridge #fugu #geese #shoelaces

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#determined #little #nobody #offend #print

I’m sexually attracted to statues made out of decomposing food. Is it normal to be hungry during intercourse? 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#decomposing #food #funny #humor #hunger

There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them. ↗

— Greta Garbo

#cheapen #heart #inside #joys #many

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it. ~(Camus, as quoted by Tony Judt) ↗

— Albert Camus

#ethics #philosophy #tony-judt #ethics

Writing, as most art, is considered to be essentially superfluous. Who is an artist before a surgeon? Or a scientist? But the fact that tyrants and political forces of every age have been threatened by art again and again, condemned it as degenerate or poisonous, and have silenced, brutalized, or murdered artists because of their work only serves to illustrate how significant art is, that it is our one greatest power. I would even go so far as to say that the tyrant ‘understands’ art more than the devotee, for the latter is generally too ‘pious’ and adoring, almost like a simple-minded believer overwrought by faith who simply loves and finds everything ‘great,’ whereas the former suffers the transformative threat of art more, is even endangered by it, hence their terror. ↗

— Rainer J. Hanshe

#tyranny #age