quotes for intellectuals

Beyond the banal truisms we've heard already. Curated by artist & poet Cassandra Pereira: cassandrapereira.com | See also my art/poetry tumblr: imaginationstimulation.tumblr.com

[perfectfeelings]

“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast.”

— William Nicholson

[quotefeeling]

“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.”

— Arabic Proverb

[quotesforintellectuals]

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

― Helen Keller

[philosophybits]

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

[funeral]

There is a type of person for whom life is a more insurmountable problem than for others, for whom the burden of anxiety and fear is almost as constant in his daily breath. Rank used the term "neurotic" for one type of person who was without illusion, who saw things as they were, who was overwhelmed by the fragility of the human enterprise. . . . [ The neurotic ] is the "realist" that William James talked about when he said that the right reaction to the horrors of organismic life on this planet is the psychotic one. But this kind of "realism," as Rank said, is the most self-defeating of all.

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

[funeral]

The hysteric, whose body is transformed into a theater for forgotten scenes, relives the past, bearing witness to a lost childhood that survives in suffering.

Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman

[quotesforintellectuals]

The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time;

– W.B. Yeats, from his poem "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz"

[quotesforintellectuals]

Favorite Quotes from "The Alchemist" by Paulo Choelho

"Once you go into the desert, there's no going back," said the camel driver. "And when you can't go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward. The rest is up to Allah, including the danger."

The dunes are changed by the wind, but hte desert never changes. That's the way it will be with our love for each other.

When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well. Anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing will never discover his own.

Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"But this payment goes well beyond my generosity," the monk responded. "Don't say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less next time."

[quotesforintellectuals]

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we do our eyes.

– G. C. Lichtenberg

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

– Mark Twain

[quotesforintellectuals]

What are you doing is, of course, in the first place, living. And life involves passions, faiths, doubts and courage. The critical inquiry into what these things mean and imply is philosophy.

– Josiah Royce

[philosophybits]

“When you fully enter the realm of love, this broken world becomes rich and beautiful, and consists solely of opportunities for love.”

— Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

[apocryphics]

Jorie Graham

[c-ubby]

“Proust says memory is of two kinds. There is the daily struggle to recall where we put our reading glasses and there is a deeper gust of longing that comes up from the bottom of the heart involuntary. At sudden times. For sudden reasons.”

— Anne Carson, from “Wildly Constant,” London Review of Books (Vol. 31, No. 8, 30 April 2009)

[funeral]

Rosemary Gordon, Bridges: Metaphor for Psychic Processes

[weltenwellen]

L. A. Johnson, from "Birthmark"

[quotesforintellectuals]

"As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun."

– Ram Dass

[quotesforintellectuals]

The death of your mother is not comparable to the death of the man you loved: it is the prelude to your death. Because it is the death of the creature that conceived you, carried in the womb, gifted life. And your flesh is her flesh, your blood is her blood, your body is an extension of her body: the moment she dies, a part of you or the principle of you dies physically, nor is the umbilical cord cut to separate you. To postpone that death which was a prelude to my death, so I stayed awake. To keep me awake I kept her awake and talked, talked. I told her what I had never told her and I would never tell to anyone, my wounds, my regrets, my doubts, precious burden however, since it was life itself, I told her that despite those wounds and regrets and doubts, I loved life very much. I was so happy to be born, and I thanked her on my knees for giving birth to me.

– "The Meaning of Life" by Oriana Fallaci