#phil

It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#men

Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings. ↗

— Al-Ghazali

#men

Awe is what moves us forward. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#mythology #philosophy #spirituality #art

Is beauty enhanced or adulterated by utility? ↗

— Sena Jeter Naslund

#philosophy #beauty

In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#mythology #philosophy #spirituality #art

Sometimes it's hard to believe what you are. ↗

— Riyadh Razzaq

#humor #inspirational #life #philosophy #attitude

The best part about being a woman is - when you feel there is no difference or the need for making those distinctions. The worst thing about being a woman of self-sufficient character and strength is - finding oneself in a society of weak men. That is where male tyranny begins. ↗

— Michelle February

#men

And so these refined parents rejected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered in bruises. Eventually they devised a new refinement. Under the pretext that the child dirtied her bed (as though a five-year-old deep in her angelic sleep could be punished for that), they forced her to eat excrement, smearing it all over her face. And it was the mother that did it! And that woman would lock her daughter up in the outhouse until morning and she did so even on the coldest nights, when it was freezing. Just imagine the woman being able to sleep with the child’s cries coming from that outhouse! Imagine that little creature, unable to even understand what is happening to her, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fist, weeping hot, unresentful, meek tears, and begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her… ...let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, only to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#imagination

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life...to beauty all is forgiven. ↗

— Muriel Barbery

#beauty

If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself? ↗

— Richard Wright

#culture #fear #man #philosophy #men