#though

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#individualism #preference #independence

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#lives #most #opinions #other #passions

Det är ett faktum som ingen kan bestrida att hon under hela denna långa tid inte en dag vikit från min sida. Om dagarna har hon ständigt varit i mina tankar. Om nätterna har hon varit i mina drömmar. ↗

— Stig Dagerman

#love #thoughts #dreams

What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous. ↗

— John Green

#truth #doubt

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#independence #partisanship #politics #radicalism #iraq

I thought, possibly, that what I really needed was to go where nobody knew me and start over again, with none of my previous decisions, conversations, or expectations coming with me. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#start-over-again #thought #conversation

But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little and who talk too much. ↗

— John Dryden

#loquacity #thoughtlessness #contemporary

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about. If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean? ↗

— Jay Asher

#thinking #thoughts #random

The Chair I’m writing to you, who made the archaic wooden chair look like a throne while you sat on it. Amidst your absence, I choose to sit on the floor, which is dusty as a dry Kansas day. I am stoic as a statue of Buddha, not wanting to bother the old wooden chair, which has been silent now for months. In this sunlit moment I think of you. I can still picture you sitting there-- your forehead wrinkled like an un-ironed shirt, the light splashed on your face, like holy water from St. Joseph’s. The chair, with rounded curves like that of a full-figured woman, seems as mellow as a monk in prayer. The breeze blows from beyond the curtains, as if your spirit has come back to rest. Now a cloud passes overhead, and I hush, waiting to hear what rests so heavily on the chair’s lumbering mind. Do not interrupt, even if the wind offers to carry your raspy voice like a wispy cloud. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#chair #insightful #metaphor #peaceful #pensive

But I've strayed so far from normal now, I'll never find my way back. And the truth is, I no longer want to. ↗

— Alyson Noel

#thought-provoking