#realization

Good generalship is a realization that... you've got to try and figure out how to accomplish your mission with a minimum loss of human life. ↗

— Norman Schwarzkopf

#figure #good #got #how #human

For much longer, he could have stayed with Kamaswami, made money, wasted money, filled his stomach, and let his soul die of thirst; for much longer he could have lived in this soft, well upholstered hell, if this had not happened: the moment of complete hopelessness and despair, that most extreme moment, when he hang over the rushing waters and was ready to destroy himself. That he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#inspirational #profound-realizations #beauty

In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#civilization #consequences #environment #foresight #insight

What you call life is but a dream, and reality is relative. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#dream #life #life-and-living #life-experience #real

It's like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#life #movies #funny

It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article. And Rook. Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook. That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul. ↗

— Richard Castle

#flaws #hurt #introspection #realization #relationships

I just needed to realize that style was like personality - it didn't always have to be consistent; it just had to be something you lived with. ↗

— David Levithan

#self-realization

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#life

We must reject the artificial and embrace what is real and true: truth in food, community, relationships and self. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#awareness #eye-opening #mind-opening #reality-of-life #realization

Why wait? So precious is this life—this gift—this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this. ↗

— Jennifer DeLucy

#encouragement #faith #finding-joy #growing-up #hard-times