Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." . . . I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions, like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects to "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar. —Jeffrey Eugenides More about this quote Tags: regret experience happiness joy sadness emotion Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. —George Orwell More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I am not at all interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite. —Jamaica Kincaid More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
In order to live with integrity, we must stop fragmenting and compartmentalizing our lives. Telling lies at work and then expecting great truths in meditation is nonsensical. —Sharon Salzberg More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms. —Ouida More about this quote Tags: truth messiness propriety Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. —Abraham Lincoln More about this quote Tags: truth dog anatomy tail leg Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth that we profess, and the thoroughgoing disregard for it that we practice. —Vilhjalmur Stefansson More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Story by Jung of a conversation with a chief of the Pueblo Indians: Jung asked the chief's opinion of the white man and was told that it was not a high one. White people, said Ochwiay Biano, seem always upset, always restlessly looking for something, with the result that their faces are covered with wrinkles. He added that white men must be crazy because they think with their heads, and it is well-known that only crazy people do that. Jung asked in surprise how the Indian thought, to which Ochwiay Biano replied that naturally he thought with his heart. —Laurens Van der Post More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it. —Faith Baldwin More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. —Wendell Phillips More about this quote Tags: past growth evolution revolution Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
You know of the disease called "sleeping sickness." There also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. Your soul suffers if you live superficially. —Albert Schweitzer More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage. —Ian McEwan More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I do think that women could make politics irrelevant by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action, the likes of which we have never seen — just so far from people's ideas of state structure and viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy. And what it is is very subtle forms of interrelation which do not follow some hierarchical pattern that is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but fraternity. And I think it's women who are going to have to break the spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation. —Germaine Greer More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark. —Zen proverb More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Suddenly, it becomes a subversion of progress to assert the common-sense principle that communities exist for the health and enjoyment of those who live in them, not for the convenience of those who drive through them, fly over them, or exploit their real estate for profit. —Theodore Roszak More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email