#out

Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#better #designed #education #facts #feel

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him. ↗

— George Orwell

#down-and-out-in-paris-and-london #education #fear #george-orwell #hierarchy

It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals. ↗

— Trevanian

#youth #courage

Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#southern-writing #mystery

When people tell me they can’t afford to join a gym, I tell them to go outside; planet Earth is a gym and we’re already members. Run, climb, sweat, and enjoy all of the natural wonder that is available to you. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#earth #gym #nature #outside #run

What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#poetry #soul #youth #death

...one of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#old-age #youth #age

In my youth I loved climbing and scrambling up rocks and mountains: now I seldom intrude on the dweller of a second story, and my greatest enemy or friend may avoid me altogether on the third; so humbled is the aspiring spirit of my youth. ↗

— Edward John Trelawny

#youth-is-temporary #age

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man's spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man's skin. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#youth #age

Behold yon rough and flinty road Where youth, now youth no more, Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loaves He cast away of yore. ↗

— Emma Ghent Curtis

#experience #poem #poetry #poets #youth