Ben > Ben's Quotes

“We’ve discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“Always be. Never try to become. You can be anything you want, just don’t work at becoming. Remember to be it.”
― John Perkins, Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation

“the wilderness “builds receptivity” to the idea that we owe moral obligations to other beings.”
― Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man

“Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

“It turns out that prayer is one more way through which we can create changes in the land. By setting aside some places as sacred, we engage in an interaction with wild nature in which we do not take our sustenance from the earth, but instead make an offering to it. To construct “a portal to another world” through ceremony or ritual or private meditation is to create another type of working landscape—one that is at work by being a sanctuary and a site of communion with the wonders of Earth. Prayer, too, is a use of the landscape. It’s how we can give back to wild nature, by doing what humans do best: investing a place with meaning and with myth.”
― Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
― John Lubbock, The Use Of Life

“A Warrior of Light values a child's eyes because they are able to look at the world without bitterness. When he wants to find out if the person beside him is worthy of his trust, he tries to see him as a child would”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

“He might dance down the street on his way to work, gaze into the eyes of a complete stranger and speak of love at first sight, or defend an apparently absurd idea. Warriors of light allow themselves days like these.

He is not afraid to weep over ancient sorrows or feel joy at new discoveries. When he feels that the moment has arrived, he drops everything and goes off on some long-dreamed-of adventure. When he realises that he can do no more, he abandons the fight, but never blames himself for having committed a few unexpected acts of folly.

A warrior does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”
― Emile Zola

“Greatest among us are those who can deploy “my friend” to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough