#on

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#exploration #explore #land #mysterious #mystery

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#life

Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#relationships #life

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck. ↗

— J.D. Salinger

#education #education

The problem with educating stupid people was that they didn’t know they were stupid. The same went for curing crazy people. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#crazy #crazy-people #phoenix #stupid #stupid-people

Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past. ↗

— Michael Simkins

#traveling #education

We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon. ↗

— Jimmy Carter

#judgement #life #preparation #religion #life

That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them. ↗

— Cecelia Ahern

#life

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days. ↗

— Eric Brown

#conscious #conscious thought #days #few #find

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend. ↗

— Colleen McCullough

#legend #inspirational