Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Clarice Lispector on What It Means to Be a Person
Tag: Quote
Simone de Beauvoir on Becoming a Woman
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Bertrand Russell on Religion
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
— Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (via Philosophy Bits)
Erica Avey on Subjectivity
“Is speaking/(writing) subjectively an inherently selfish act? Can you still become no one if you find a subjective way to speak for yourself that also speaks for others? Can you speak for all those who came before you (especially those silenced) by speaking now? Do women get challenged more for speaking subjectively than men?”
Seth Godin on Our Culture
Our culture is the result of a trillion tiny acts, taken by billions of people, every day. Each of them can seem insignificant, but all of them add up, one way or the other, to the change we each live through.”
— Seth Godin (via A Layman’s Blog)
Virginia Woolf on Meaning
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (via Macrolit)
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Being Wanted
Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (via Philosophy Bits)
Baruch Spinoza on Free Will
So experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men [sic] believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the cause by which they are determined, that the decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves which therefore vary as the disposition of the body varies.”
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
Love Words
Giovanni Boccaccio on the Wrongs of Long Ago
Wrongs of long ago are more easily criticized than put right.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio, Andreuccio da Perugia’s Neapolitan adventures
Lisa Marie Blair 