#ran

It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate: and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from inanition, not stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden fruit it longed to taste--and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#difficulty #diligence #perseverance #experience

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#am #america #experiment #going #grandiose

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend. ↗

— Truman Capote

#love #stranger #friendship

Nobody wants to look like a fool. Nine times out of ten, that reason alone keeps people from allowing themselves to believe. ↗

— Darynda Jones

#belief #faith #faith

We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human. ↗

— Charles Eisenstein

#new-normal #normality #paradigm-shift #paradigms #sacred-economics

Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. The simple act of reading poetry alters thought patterns and the shuttle of the breath. Poetry induces trance. Its words are chant. Its rhythms drumbeats. Its images become the icons of the inner eye. Poetry is more than a description of the sacred experience; it carries the experience itself. ↗

— Ivan M. Granger

#poetry #rhythm #trance #experience

There,” she said softly. “Now he could be sleeping. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#dobby #hermione-granger #death

To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#experience

I'm wondering whether I can explain," said Lee. "Where there is no likeness of experience it's very difficult. I understand you were not born in America." "No, in Ireland." "And in a few years you can almost disappear; while I, who was born in Grass Valley, went to school and several years to the University of California, have no chance of mixing." "If you cut your queue, dressed and talked like other people?" "No. I tried it. To the so-called whites I was still a Chinese, but an untrustworthy one; and at the same time my Chinese friends steered clear of me. I had to give it up. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#chinese-american #experience

If you've never worked for an angry or a jealous woman then you have never truly experienced the full plethora and bouquet of the working experience. ↗

— Brandon Kelly

#experience