#to

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#poetic #profound #sabina #tereza #tomas

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing. ↗

— Eve Ensler

#carpe-diem #cherish #enjoy-life #self-empowerment #self-reliance

Inventory: "Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#contentment #curiosity #doubt #envy #foes

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story? ↗

— Yann Martel

#thinking #world #life

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go. ↗

— Sarah Dessen

#life #together #life

Cassia. I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle. I love you. (Ky Markham) ↗

— Ally Condie

#love #reason #story #strength #life

Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history. ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#life

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything. ↗

— Charles de Lint

#stories #life

I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#obvious #right-to-life #life

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture. ↗

— George Eliot

#bigotry #harriet-beecher-stowe #jokes #stupidity #education