#pre

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#expectations #open-mindedness #preconceptions #reading #biography

I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now. ↗

— Tobias Wolff

#witty

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fun #pressure #wit #witty

Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one's own was beyond the pale. ↗

— Steve Hockensmith

#pride-and-prejudice #zombies #zombies

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #deism #deist #god

Confronting the worst-case scenario saps it of much of its anxiety-inducing power. Happiness reached via positive thinking can be fleeting and brittle, negative visualization generates a vastly more dependable calm. ↗

— Oliver Burkeman

#stoicism #visualization

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. ↗

— Hugo Hamilton

#future #growing-up #growth #heritage #history

Put that in your self-righteous pipe and smoke it!!!. ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#presumptousness #r-alan-woods #self-righteousness #r-alan-woods

Happiness doesn't always come in pink. Learn to appreciate the rainbow. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#happiness #joy #rainbow #richelle #richelle-goodrich

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport -- in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy." [Quoted in Socialism and Foreign Policy and War and the Liberal Conscience] ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#fighting #foreign-policy #literature #narrow-mindedness #prejudice