#sm

As soon as one stops searching for knowledge, or if one imagines that it need not be creatively sought in the depths of the human spirit but can be assembled extensively by collecting and classifying facts, everything is irrevocably and forever lost. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#imagination

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil. ↗

— William Cullen Bryant

#justice #labor #rights #unions #imagination

Some things are hard to imagine. Can you conceive of excessive contentment, for example? Or an over pleasant evening? Too much happiness? ↗

— Alan Moore

#happiness #pessimism #imagination

People sometimes imagine that without desire there would be no enjoyment. The opposite is true. When you're caught up in craving, you never really enjoy anything very much because your mind is always pulling you on to the next desire and the next after that. When you let go of desire, then you're free to enjoy whatever is right in front of you. ↗

— Lorne Ladner

#psychology #wisdom #art

I think that one of the benefits of optimism and idealism is that they lead you into things you would never have tried if you'd let yourself imagine how hard it was going to turn out to be. ↗

— Roméo Dallaire

#optimism #imagination

I´ve read that it´s the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it. ↗

— Jo Nesbø

#harry-hole #jo-nesbø #prey #smell #the-snowman

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues. ↗

— David Markson

#lenny-bruce #m-forster #nathaniel-hawthorne #norms #puritanism

I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace. ↗

— Richard Hell

#grace #ludwig-wittgensten #smart #imagination

The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#imagination

I sighed and deleted the message, imagining the dirty clothes multiplying like rabbits, because that’s what they do when I’m not around. ↗

— Alex Owens

#motherhood #sarcasm #imagination