The campaign against the death penalty has been – while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.
That’s my only goal. Surround myself with funny people, and make sure everyone has a good time and works hard.
Every now and then, President Obama sorta drops his veil. He’s less coy about his philosophy, he sort of reveals his true governing philosophy, what he really believes.
For the former, activity, any kind of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed.
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
In the end, everyone is aware of this:nobody keeps any of what he has,and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
An act of Congress could abolish the federal death penalty once and for all, and my sister in service, Representative Ayanna Pressley, has introduced a bill that would do just that.
But to mourn, that’s different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.
No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.
The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.
At the beginning a man, perhaps, thinks it would be madness to love. He thinks later, perhaps, it was madness to have ever held back. He thinks last that the madness was in ever having thought at all. God is God and there is one God.
Time stretches and calms, but still we reach, for we belonged then. We want to know. Sometimes that knowledge is painful, or inconvenient, or even damning. But it is essential. It exposes us for what we have been, and can be.
It’s good to see the snakes revealing themselves. They weren’t actually hidden at all. People hide behind the masks, but eventually you see them for who they truly are.
Even in the far future,
never forget the you of right now
Wherever you are right now,
you’re just taking a break
I think given the choice between loving Mare – betrayal included – and never knowing her, I’d chose love. I risked, and I lost, but the risk was still worth it.
Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.
The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?
For over a century and a half, anarchists have been arguing that coercive, hierarchical organization (as embodied in government and corporations) is not equivalent to organization per se (which they regard as necessary), and that coercive organization should be replaced by decentralized, nonhierarchical organization based on voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. This is hardly a rejection of organization.
Can I just say that dying sucks? All that bullshit about seeing the light and having this inner peace, blah, blah, blah. It’s crap.
To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.
Humm humm haaa. Rahmumm humm haaaa, intoned Opal, finishing her chant. Peace be inside me, tolerance all around me, forgiveness in my path. Now, Mervall, show me where the filthy human is so that I may feed him his organs.
Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends.
Let’s both write our names in the sand and pray that the waves of time will leave a lasting mark on the shore of our memories.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no death the way we understood it. The body dies, but not the soul.
Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head,
It will get easier, your dreams are not dead.
I’d never seen anything like it. First a trial, then a few murders, then dancing. Life goes on. Or, in this case, death continues.
I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.
Of all the things I’ve ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away from Cec’s room, ‘Life’s that way. Let’s go home.’And so we did.
What is a philosophy? It Is an answer satisfactory to the reason to all the great problems of life. That is what is meant by philosophy. It must satisfy the reason, and it must show the unity underlying the endless diversity of the facts that science observes.
You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
Victory over the infinite space of zero is the birth of space.
This law … defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.
He told himself a story. Not at first. At first, there wasn’t time for thoughts that came in the shape of words. His head was blessedly empty of stories then. War was coming. It was upon him. Arin had been born in the year of the god of death, and he was finally glad of it. He surrendered himself to his god, who smiled and came close. Stories will get you killed, he murmured in Arin’s ear. Now, you just listen. Listen to me.
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
I think ‘Historian’ is ultimately a positive record, but I was a little bit worried about taking people into a dark world. I tried to do it with as much care as possible, but it’s not easy to ask people to think about death or loss or confusion.
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.
What do you most value in your friends?
Their continued existence.
I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.
He’s the one. And some thoughts once thought are very hard to unthink.
Man’s naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.
I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
Life is funny. Things change, people change, but you will always be you, so stay true to yourself and never sacrifice who you are for anyone.
As for what it’s against – the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.
All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn’t be that hard.
To me, the sea is like a person – like a child that I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea, I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.
A man’s life can pivot on the smallest hinge of time. No minute is without potential for momentous change, and each tick of the clock might be the voice of Fate whispering a promise or a warning.
Death is nothing more than the victory of time. To make fast bodily appearance is to snatch it from the course of time, to stow it in the hold of life.
For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
…everyone needs a somewhere, a place he can go. There comes a time, you see, inevitably there comes a time you have to have a somewhere you can go!
He is fifteen and ten and five. He is an instant. He is flying back to her. He is hers again. She feels the weight of him in her chest as he comes into her arms. He is her son, her beloved child, and she takes him back.
Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence.
It was well said—by Jean Tarrou in The Plague, I think—that attendance at lectures in an unknown language will help to hone one’s awareness of the exceedingly slow passage of time. I once had the experience of being ‘waterboarded’ and can now dimly appreciate how much every second counts in the experience of the torture victim, forced to go on enduring what is unendurable.
The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.