Empowerment feminism is a cynical sham. . . . SEX panics obscure the actual object of a culture’s fears. . . . The modern sex panic’s signature characteristic is an inability and unwillingness to distinguish between degrees of misconduct. JILL LEPORE
WHAT MOVES R.J. PALACIO MOST IN A WORK OF LITERATURE?
WITHOUT DOUBT, the thing that gets me every time is when I come across an unexpected moment of tenderness between people. I remember reading “The Road” on the subway one morning, and I was just crying like a baby. It was embarrassing. Sure, it’s a novel full of unbelievable violence and apocalyptic nightmare stuff, but the humanity and the love is right there from the first line of the book. “When he woke in the woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.” Has there ever been a better first line? It’s all right there — darkness and light, and love.
WHEN your children become adults with whom you can have deep, philosophic conversations that blow your mind, well, it’s really a joyful, exuberant, life-affirming moment in the life of a parent.
N.Y.Times Book Review 8/27/23
NEVER COME BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS SLAVE, THE SLAVE WILL KILL YOU FIRST. SHIVA NAIPUL
DO NOT BE DAUNTED BY THE WORLD’S GRIEF. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. TALMUD
ROBERTSON DAVIES “World of Wonders” “The Rebel Angels”
NEVER HARBOR GRUDGES; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else.
THE EYE SEES only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.
THERE IS no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
IF YOU DON’T HURRY UP and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you’ll get.
THE WORLD is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.
A TRULY GREAT BOOK should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
A MAN MUST BE OBEDIENT TO THE PROMPTINGS OF HIS INNERMOST HEART.
WE MISTRUST anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
ONLY A FOOL EXPECTS TO BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME.
WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE BULK IS EQUATED WITH QUALITY.
THE DOG is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can’t afford a yes man.
THE LOVE OF TRUTH LIES AT THE ROOT OF MUCH HUMOR.
WHETHER you are really right or not doesn’t matter; it’s the belief that counts.
THE ART OF THE QUOTER IS TO KNOW WHEN TO STOP.
THE GREAT BOOK for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. and that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE 1749-1832. “Faust” “Young Werther”. “”The Metamorphos of Plants” NIETZSCHE: “THE LAST GERMAN FOR WHOM I FEEL REVERENCE.”
COURAGE if the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.
YOU CAN EASILY judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
A MAN SEES IN THE WORLD WHAT HE CARRIES IN HIS HEART.
WHY LOOK FOR CONSPIRACY WHEN STUPIDITY CAN EXPLAIN SO MUCH.
THE MOMENT one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, power and grace.
TO THE WORLD you might be one person, but to one person, you might be the world. Kindness is the golden chain by which our world is bound together.
NONE are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
AT THE MOMENT OF COMMITMENT THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE CONSPIRES TO ASSIST YOU.
IF I ACCEPT YOU AS YOU ARE, I will make you worse, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
WE do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
DAILY LIFE IS MORE INSTRUCTIVE THAN THE MOST EFFECTIVE BOOK.
EVERY DAY we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
NOTHING IS MORE DISGUSTING than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE INDICATES THE DECLINE OF A NATION.
THE GREAT THE KNOWLEDGE, THE GREATER TE DOUBT.
NOTHING is worth more than this day. you cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRIGHTFUL THAN IGNORANCE IN ACTION.
IGNORANT MEN raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
DIVIDE AND RULE, a sound motto. unite and lead, a better one.
CORRECTION does much, but encouragement does more.
HELL begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.
IF NATURE IS YOUR TEACHER, YOU SOUL WILL AWAKEN.
OUR SENSES DON’T DECEIVE US: OUR JUDGEMENT DOES.
THE HARDEST THING TO SEE is what is in front of your eyes.
THERE IS NOTHING WORSE THAN AGGRESSIVE STUPIDITY.
MAGIC IS BELIEVING IN YOURSELF, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
DOESN’T SURPRISE ME that christ our lord preferred to live with whores and sinners, seeing I go for that myself.
RITA DOVE 1952——“Playlist for the Apocalypse” Pulitzer Prize”
SOMETIMES word is found spright it trembles at the slightest explanation.
BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
THE LIBRARY is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
WE SHOULD ALWAYS do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
COURAGE has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.
LOVE SMILES!