#ought

In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social. ↗

— James M. Baldwin

#individual #marks #practical #self-consciousness #social

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go. I was in my study writing. I was learning how to go down into myself and salvage bits and pieces of the past. I was learning how to sneak up on the unconscious and how to catch my seemingly random thoughts and fantasies. By closing me out of his world, Bennett had opened all sorts of worlds inside my own head. Gradually I began to realize that none of the subjects I wrote poems about engaged my deepest feelings, that there was a great chasm between what I cared about and what I wrote about. Why? What was I afraid of? Myself, most of all, it seemed. "Freedom is an illusion," Bennett would have said and, in a way, I too would have agreed. Sanity, moderation, hard work, stability . . . I believed in them too. But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up? Was it a voice? Or was it a thump? Something even more primitive than speech. A kind of pounding in my gut which I had nicknamed my "hunger-thump." It was as if my stomach thought of itself as a heart. And no matter how I filled it—with men, with books, with food—it refused to be still. Unfillable—that's what I was. Nymphomania of the brain. Starvation of the heart. ↗

— Erica Jong

#feminism #insecurity #thoughts #writing #art

I thought it was time to get a group together and the first person I thought of was Wayne Shorter. I called Wayne and in the meantime, Wayne called me to make an album with him, which was Super Nova. ↗

— Miroslav Vitous

#called #first #get #group #him

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work. ↗

— Voltaire

#banished #beauties #compliment #didactic #flowery

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it. ↗

— Voltaire

#because #brought #cannot #colors #contrary

If we have been brought up with the idea that life is for suffering and sacrifice, then of course we would seek death to escape this 'vale of tears'. ↗

— Claude Vorilhon

#brought #course #death #escape #idea

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison. ↗

— Claude Vorilhon

#been #brain #brains #brought #certainly

A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human. ↗

— Charles Wagner

#chief #his #honestly #human #man

A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential? ↗

— Jane Wagner

#full #i #i am #living #moment

The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can't do. ↗

— Denis Waitley

#concentrate #constantly #done #hand #i