#favorite-quotes

[feathered-entity]

“I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is. I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean… And if I said I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying… Because I was born to be the other woman. Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone. Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, and finally I did on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art. Live fast. Die young. Be wild. And have fun. I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever: "I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself I ride, I just ride.” Who are you? Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. But I am free.“

Lana Del Rey

[feathered-entity]

Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.

The Time Keeper, Mitch Albom

[feathered-entity]

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person—it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distance… Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distance exists, a marvellous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of seeing each other as a whole before an immense sky.

[feathered-entity]

Some days, to the world, I feel like the fake drawers on bathroom cabinets or the false pockets on a suit's vest; a reasonable addition that looks like it belongs, but what possible purpose will I ever serve? Some days, to the world, I feel like a thunderstorm with too little thunder, and too much rain and no fathomable idea what to do with all the lightning growing inside me. Some days, to the world, I feel like a book with no cover and a title page that is torn; I am filled with words, but only those that care to read will ever understand what I am about.

Tyler Knott Gregson

[feathered-entity]

A warrior of light often loses heart. He believes that nothing can stir in him the emotion he so desired. He is forced to spend many evenings and nights feeling that he is one of the vanquished, and nothing seems able to restore his enthusiasm. His friends say: ‘Perhaps his fight is over.’ The warrior feels pain and confusion when he hears such remarks because he knows that he has not yet reached the place he wanted to reach. But he is stubborn and refuses to relinquish his aims. Then, when he least expects it, a new door opens.

[feathered-entity]

"History suggests that Alexander Bell’s telephone was, quite literally, an overnight sensation. One that almost didn’t happen. In 1876, America was celebrating its hundredth birthday. A centennial exhibition was held in Philadelphia. New inventions were being displayed, things that would mark greatness in the next hundred years, including a forty-foot-high steam engine and a primitive typewriter. At the last minute, Bell’s crude communication device was granted a small table in a narrow spot between a stairway and a wall, in a hall called the Department of Education. It sat for weeks with no real attention. Bell was living in Boston. He had no plans —or money— to attend the exhibition. But on a Friday afternoon he went to the train station to see his fiancée, Marble, who was heading there to visit her father. She cried at the idea of leaving him. She insisted he come too. As the train pulled away, Bell, to comfort her, jumped aboard —without a ticket. By acting on that impulse, Bell found himself at the exhibition two days later, on a hot Sunday afternoon, when a tired and sweaty delegation of judges walked by, Most of them just wanted to go home. But one, the esteemed emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro de Alcantara, recognized the dark-haired inventor from his work with deaf students. “Professor Bell!” Dom Pedro said, getting him with open arms. “What are you doing here?” After Bell explained, Dom Pedro agreed to witness his invention. The weary judges resigned themselves to staying a few more minutes. A wire had been strung across the room. Bell went to the transmitter end with the emperor went to the receiver. Just as he had done with Thomas Watson months earlier (Come here. I want to see you), Bell spoke into his device as the emperor lifted the receiver to his ear. His expression suddenly brightened. With the crowd looking on, the emperor declared in astonishment, “My God! It talks!” The next day, the invention was moved to a featured position. Thousands mobbed to view it. It won first prize and a gold medal, and the world ignited with a previously unimaginable idea: speaking to someone you could not see. Had it not been for a man’s love for a woman, making him jump aboard a train, Bell’s phone might never have found an audience. Once it did, life on earth was altered forever.”

[xenosicarius]

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.”

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

[feathered-entity]

Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener examined every shrub which grew in his path; it seemed as if he was looking into their innermost nature, making observations in regard to their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape, and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue and perfume.