#ten

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#children #death #fear #friends #idleness

Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen. ↗

— Robert K. Greenleaf

#intentions #listening #skill #communication

Te leven betekent strikt genomen niets anders dan dag voor dag zelfmoord op te schuiven. ↗

— Stig Dagerman

#life-and-death #suicide #death

Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness to happen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#ego #enlightenment #happiness #heart #inner-being

New Orleans life is such a night life. The thing that comes up very often is that our day essentially doesn't start until midnight or 2 in the morning. ↗

— Robert Asprin

#day #essentially #life #midnight #morning

When do you think people die? When they are shot through the heart by the bullet of a pistol? No. When they are ravaged by an incurable disease? No. When they drink a soup made from a poisonous mushroom!? No! It’s when… they are forgotten. Dr. Hiriluk (One Piece) ↗

— Eiichiro Oda

#forgotten #one-piece #death

Freedom is more than just a patriotic concept; it is the purest intent of our design. Be you. Be free. Be nice. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#free #freedom #intent #patriotic #design

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. ↗

— William Faulkner

#perfectionism #personality #potential #self-improvement #dreams

There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#importance #dreams

In a person's lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart. ↗

— Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

#happiness #life #memories #moments #satisfaction