Here are 12 quotes I recently came upon that moved me in some way.
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. — Thucydides
Cynical and perhaps less true today?
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them. — Jonathan Swift
Would make a great short story
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke is high up my list of “dead people I want to meet”
We don’t know one percent of one millionth about anything — Thomas Edison
Whether physics or philosophy, in discovery we simply reveal more mystery…
When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. — Meng Tzu
Reminds me again of Rilke — “this is how he grows, by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings”
In a work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not even a work of genius, just good work…
Discontent by itself does not invariably create a desire for change. Other factors have to be present before discontent turns into disaffection. One of these is a sense of power. — Eric Hoffer, from Mass Movements
The book Mass Movements is at times hard to penetrate, but every few pages I have a completely mind-blasted moment
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye — Antoine de St. Exupery
Yes, yes! and meditation helps…
Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden (used by Bertrand Russell)
I partly agree
The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind…That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right. — Neil Gaiman
Reminds me of Chris Rock who said “if people in your life aren’t uncomfortable then you aren’t really writing”
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. — Camus
Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves. — Bertrand Russell
Reminds me of Anais Nin’s “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are…”