Eupraxsophy
The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.
Abraham Lincoln
12Eavesdrop a lot and take notes. It’s a way to begin to think about how the world around you is made of stories.
Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket.
I agree. Great ideas are all around us, even in the most unexpected places. We have only to pay close attention to them.
A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.
Susan Sontag (via aruariandance)
(Source: pavorst, via aruariandance)
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
Jules Renard
I would say the same of any of the fine arts for that matter.
The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.
The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Bertrand Russell (via nec-plus-ultra)
An admirable and vital endeavor, but difficult to apply. Hence, it requires constant practice and willpower.
(Source: brainpickings.org, via tharfagreinir)
Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the specter, which for time immemorial, has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a 19th century German writer and jurist who is perhaps the first gay man to “come out” and speak publicly in support for LGBT rights.
I particularly enjoy how he characterized intolerance and oppression as a hydra, against which he struck but the first blow. Like his contemporaries today, Ulrichs had no delusions about this fight needing to be continued by many others for generations.
Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.
Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard.
Even then, you’d probably still get criticized, so you might as get flak for doing something meaningful to you.
