“I cannot know who I am, because I don’t know which part of me is not me.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Being
Tag: Quote
The Greater the Wave
“The power of an ocean wave is directly related to the speed and duration of the wind that sets it in motion, and to the ‘length of its fetch,’ or the distance from its point of origin. The longer the fetch, the greater the wave. Nothing can stop these long waves. They become visible only at the end, when they rise and break; for most of their fetch the surface of the ocean is undisturbed.”
— Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (via Bryce Wilner)
The Foolishness of God
“We desperately need the foolishness of God.”
— Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet (via Csaba Osvath)
Thirteen
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
— George Orwell, 1984
A Mind-Body Problem
“We are gods with anuses.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Fight Your Way Through
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
— Ira Glass (via swissmiss)
A Clear Definition
“Had I been given a clear definition of love earlier in my life it would not have taken me so long to become a more loving person. Had I shared with others a common understanding of what it means to love it would have been easier to create love.”
Above an Abyss
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
— Vladamir Nabokov (via WeCroak)
Vantage Point
“‘If you can see a thing whole,’ he said, ‘it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives…But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.’”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
All Human Behavior
“The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one two things: either love, or a call for love”
— Marianne Williamson
Lisa Marie Blair 