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You ask, what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.

Seneca, “Letters From A Stoic”

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"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." - George Orwell,

"1984" released June 8th 1949

#1984 #GeorgeOwell #Dystopia #conscious #revolution #rebel #rebels #rebellion #quotes #truth #lines #anniversary

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"If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death."

- Alan Watts, "The Wisdom of Insecurity"

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"Injustice is sin."

- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", book 9

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"Who sends the mind to wander afar? Who first drives life to start on its journey? Who impels us to utter these words?"

The Upanishads, from 'Kena Upanishad' part 1

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...it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Philip K. Dick, 'Valis'

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I am most faithless when I am most true.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day?

Jeanette Wintering, "Written On The Body"

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Hardship becomes explosive only when it is felt to be unbearable.

Christian Meir, “Caesar: A Biography”

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Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?" Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Kurt Vonnegut, from “Cat’s Cradle”

Happy Birthday, Kurt! May your writing live on as long as our species does.

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It takes great courage to speak in fragments. It takes great courage to speak in whole sentences.

Mary Ruefle, from "On Secrets"

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If you think that happiness is a matter / of expectations fulfilled, think again.

Patty Seyburn, “The Case for Free Will”

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I give some thought / to just what it is I'm doing here. / What it is I'm after in this life. / It doesn't seem like much, / in the end.

Raymond Carver, from “Its Course”

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The white spot to the upper left which looks like the pith plug in a peeled orange is the crater Tycho. I have never been there. Perhaps one day you will. I saw many jackets in the coatroom but none of them were his. I know someone who is alive somewhere. It is embarrassing to be alive.  Sometimes you have to stand out on the street and look upwards, and then you have to pretend the stone at your feet is not an object of observation when it is.

Mary Ruefle, “Full Moon”

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Evolution can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. What a mistake we were.

Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man Without A Country"

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Permanence / doesn't interest him. / His dawn is his lifetime.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Duino Elegies, Sixth Elegy’, translated by David Young

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'People forget,' is how he put it. 'No matter what you may have done for them in the past, you can never count on them when you need them.'

Thomas Pynchon, “Inherent Vice”