KaWoodtiereads > KaWoodtiereads's Quotes

“Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done--almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit--and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We've gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out--and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children." --> Ishmael”
― Daniel Quinn

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
― E.E. Cummings

“Mother Nature Personified.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“A dream does not die on it's own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.The motive may be different, and I'm sure it often is; the consequence is not.”
― Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

“As I've looked into the eyes of street children in Afghanistan desperate for a future other than terrorism, or children in Rwanda hungry for something greater than genocide, I've reached one big conclusion: we belong to one another. And children across the Earth deserve the same hopes and opportunities we give our children here."-->Bernard Amadei, civil engineering professor at the University of Colorado and founder of Engineers Without Borders”
― Bernard Amadei

“What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion. You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice; I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“What exactly is the free world, anyway? I guess it would depend on what you consider the non-free world. And I can't find a clear definition of that, can you? Where is that? Russia? China? For chrissakes, Russia has a better Mafia than we do now, and China is pirating Lion King DVDs and selling dildos on the Internet. They sound pretty free to me. Here are some more jingoistic variations you need to be on the lookout for; "The greatest nation on Earth; the greatest nation in the history of the world"; and "the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth." That last one is usually thrown in just before we bomb a bunch of brown people. Which is every couple of years.”
― George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

“In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between "superior" and "inferior" to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in the state of pure simplicity...In the Age of Perfect Virtue, wisdom and ability were not singled out as extraordinary. The wise were seen merely as higher branches on humanity's tree, growing a little closer to the sun. People behaved correctly, without knowing that to be Righteousness and Propriety. They loved and respected each other, without calling that Benevolence. They were faithful and honest, without considering that to be Loyalty. They kept their word, without thinking of Good Faith. In their everyday conduct, they helped and employed each other, without considering Duty. They did not concern themselves with Justice, as there was no injustice. Living in harmony with themselves, each other, and the world, their actions left no trace, and so we have no physical record of their existence.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Te of Piglet

“Do I resent rich people? No. The best or worst I can do is notice them. I agree with the great Socialist writer George Orwell, who felt that rich people were poor people with money.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“There is something living deep within us all that welcomes, even relishes, the role of victimhood for ourselves. There is no cause in the world more righteously embraced than our own when we feel someone has wronged us. Perhaps it is a psychological leftover from early childhood, when we felt the primeval terror of the world around us and yearned for the intervention of a mother/protector to keep us safe. Perhaps it makes it easier to explain away our personal failures when the work of an enemy can be blamed. Perhaps we just get tired of long explanations and like the cleanliness of an easy solution. It is for wiser people than me to say. Whatever its allure, this primitive ideology of Hutu Power swept through Rwanda in 1993 and early 1994 with the speed of flame through dry grass.”
― Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man

“You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Oh! How heavily the weight of slavery pressed upon me then. I must toil day after day, endure abuse and taunts and scoffs, sleep on the hard ground, live on the coarsest fare, and not only this, but live the slave of a blood-seeking wretch, of whom I must stand henceforth in continued fear and dread. Why had I not died in my young years-before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondsman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off. I could only gaze wistfully towards the North, and think of the thousands of miles that stretched between me and the soil of freedom, over which a black freeman may not pass.”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

“In Hell, it's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Damned

“Admittedly, though, the temptation to ignore race in our advocacy may be overwhelming. Race makes people uncomfortable. One study found that some whites are so loath to talk about race and so fearful of violating racial etiquette that they indicate a preference for avoiding all contact with black people. The striking reluctance of whites, in particular, to talk about or even acknowledge race has led many scholars and advocates to conclude that we would be better off not talking about race at all. This view is buttressed by the fact that white liberals, nearly as much as conservatives, seem to lave lost patience with debates about racial equity. Barack Obama noted this phenomenon in his book, The Audacity ofHope: :Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America; even the most fair-minded of whites, those who would genuinely like to see racial inequality ended and poverty relieved, tend to push back against racial victimization-or race-specific claims based on the history of race discrimination in this country.”
― Michelle Alexander

“Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody's friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don't want to be in their own.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“I can try to protect my children, to help and guide them, and I can love them, but I cannot save them. Nic, Jasper, and Daisy will live, and someday they will die, with or without me.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“We arrive at demonstrations excited, as if our favorite musician is playing on the speakers' stage. We convince ourselves we are doing something to solve the racial problem when we are really doing something to satisfy our feelings. We go home fulfilled, like we dined at our favorite restaurant. And this fulfillment is fleeting, like a drug high. The problems of inequity and injustice persist. They persistently make us feel bad and guilty. We persistently do something to make ourselves feel better as we convince ourselves we are making society better, as we never make society better.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“As the concept of home became clearer, women became smaller. For smart, ambitious women with no outlet for their skills except their children, motherhood and homemaking became all-consuming identities. Dalla Costa and James write that women decorate their homes because their homes are the only proof they exist. The same logic could be used for pouring one's life into children. Children become a woman's reason for being, her proof of existence. As if her own existence weren't enough. (Pg 47)”
― Lyz Lenz, Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women

“Chained to a child or chained to a desk, a woman's value is contained within her (re)productive abilities. And when these abilities fail, through miscarriage, stillbirth, medical problems, infertility, or she opts out of the whole process, we don't know how to see her. We can't see her. (pg. 52)”
― Lyz Lenz, Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women

“People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time