đź’¬Quotes
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.—
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything.
― Norm Macdonald, 2016
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
Instead, I simply want to posit one idea for your consideration: Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention.1
In other words, what if we experience the world as disenchanted because, in part, enchantment is an effect of a certain kind of attention we bring to bear on the world and we are now generally habituated against this req... See more
In other words, what if we experience the world as disenchanted because, in part, enchantment is an effect of a certain kind of attention we bring to bear on the world and we are now generally habituated against this req... See more
L. M. Sacasas • If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Edward O. Wilson, debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever,