Phenomenal Writing
... See moreA friend of mine lost the ability to form memories for a few days last week and it really hammered home that being in the present isn't all that great — it is the layering of the past onto the present that gives stuff meaning.
This makes me think: if having no memory robs the present of meaning, actively forming more memories should make life richer
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
... See moreHis nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he began almost unconsciously, from some inner necessity, to stare at all the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept lapsing every moment into
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Steinbeck on the one story:
... See moreI believe that there is one story in the world, and only one... Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil... There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and
If I seem so happy to you, you could never say anything that would please me so much. For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’
Dostoevsky, Father Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov
Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.”
Robert A. Caro • The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV
It was as if normal existence were a photograph of shapeless things in badly printed colors, but this was a sketch done in a few sharp strokes that made things seem clean, important—and worth doing.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The pianist whose fingers seem supernaturally nimble, the presenter whose message seems viscerally compelling, and the artist whose paintings seem impossibly realistic all wield the same magic: they’ve invested more time than you’d expect.