Wafa

بعدنا طيبين قول الله

[philosophybits]

“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”

— Albert Camus, A Happy Death

[philosophybits]

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

[philosophybits]

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

[philosophybits]

“It’s terrifying beyond all description the kinds of mental torment that there can be! It wasn’t until two days ago that I could hear the voice of reason over the howls of the damned and I began to work again. And perhaps I’ll get better now and be able to produce something decent. But I never knew what it meant to feel only one step away from madness.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Letter to Bertrand Russell (January 1914)”

[random-brushstrokes]

Carl Kahler - My Wife's Lovers (1891)

At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, a bold painting by Austrian artist Carl Kahler made a splash among critics. Entitled My Wife's Lovers, the work drew tremendous attention for its lavish depictions of a wealthy socialite's paramours. It wasn't infidelity, though: The "lovers" were her cats. Now, My Life's Lovers—perhaps the greatest cat tribute ever created by human hands—just sold at Sotheby's auction for a whopping $826,000.

The painting, which Kahler completed in the early 1890s, stands roughly six feet wide and eight-and-a-half feet tall. It features 42 Turkish Angora cats as they pose and play inside a luxurious home, surrounded by precious art and antiques.

Who would commission such an incredible a piece of art? It was none other than Kate Birdsall Johnson, a San Francisco philanthropist and one of history's greatest cat ladies. Johnson had more than 50 "lovers"—her husband's ironic nickname for the pets—and lived in luxury at a so-called "cat ranch" in California. Her feline friends were well heeled, to say the least, and had their own full-time staff. Johnson was known to pay thousands of dollars for an individual cat and even bought pet birds to amuse her furry darlings.

When Johnson died, according to legend, she willed a large sum of money to her cats so they would continue to live in luxury. A Sotheby's release claims that her will set aside $500,000 to guarantee the cats' perpetual care, but the actual document contains no reference to cats or other animals. She was certainly generous, though: Johnson's will established a free hospital with some of her riches. (source)

[jabir29]

" لغة حبّي أنكَ الشخص الوحيد الذي لا أتجاهله في الأيام التي لا أريد فيها التحدث إلى أي شخص. "

[random-brushstrokes]

Thorvald Erichsen - Wooded Landscape (1900)

[random-brushstrokes]

Ugo Valeri - Portrait of Eleonora Duse (1901)

[jabir29]

‏"مِن أعظم سِمات النُضج والوعي وقوّة الشخصية هي قدرة الإنسان على التجاهل، تجاهل الجاهل، تجاهل المُستفز ومن يرمي الكلام بِلا هدف، تجاهل الهَفوات وتجاهل المُتجاهل، قِمّة النُضج هي قُدرتك على معرفة النفايات العقلية التي يجب ألا تُلوث دِماغك بها ومعرفة ما الطّيبات التي يجب أن ينشغل بها ."

[nousrose]

The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed, who infuses into the body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent; he is the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by will-o’-the-wisps.

Symbols of Transformation

Carl Jung

[philosophybits]

“Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

[joeinct]

Untitled, Photo by Gordon Parks, 1956

[philosophybits]

“Wise friends chase away sorrows, and foolish ones gather them.”

— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

[philosophybits]

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen, but, if one will, are to be lived.”

— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

[jabir29]

‏" لا تحاولُ أنْ تغيرَ منْ أحدهمْ حتى يلائمك، ولا تغيرَ منْ نفسكَ لتلائمَ غيرك، خلقنا مختلفينِ لنتكاملَ وليسَ لنتناسخ ."

[philosophybits]

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1822–1863)

[jabir29]

" الحبّ في العصرِ الحديثِ أصبحَ بمثابةِ سوقٍ مفتوح؛ حيثُ يتمُ استبدالَ الأشخاصِ بسهولةِ بمجرد ظهورِ خيارٍ (أفضل) على شاشةِ الهاتفِ ."

— إيفا إيلوز