Has Been Quotes

Will you tell me how long you have loved him?"
"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. ~ Jane Austen

A sculptor will more easily extract a beautiful statue from a piece of rough marble than from one that has been badly blocked out by someone else. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

And in the morning when the sun rise. Look in the water, see the blue sky. As if heaven has been laid there at our feet. ~ Conor Oberst

Sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup. ~ David Levithan

If measuring by this earthly realm's time then it's been years but in the unseen realm above known as Vehaven, it has been but a moment. ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a fly-swatter under it... this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. ~ Liu Cixin

This nation has been through hard times. But those hard times have hardened our resolve. I'm ready to do the difficult work ahead. But I want to do that work with Barack Obama, and not a Tea Party ideologue. We can move America forward, but we can only do it together. ~ Harry Reid

Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance. ~ Ben Okri

the modern return to heathenism has been a return not even to the heathen youth but rather to the heathen old age. But ~ G.K. Chesterton

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As a police officer it has been my experience that pedophiles are able to operate and stay functional over long periods of time and victimize scores, even hundreds, of children, because no one wants to believe his or her own intuitions about the symptoms in the perpetrator. ~ James Lee Burke

The most rapturous delights you have ever had - in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace - are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ's redemption of us from evil and death. ~ Timothy Keller

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you. ~ Albert Goldbarth

Political events are part of everyday life [in Colombia], so art and politics came to me as a natural thing, something that has been very much present in my life from the start. ~ Doris Salcedo

Duny," said Geralt seriously, "Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left." "Geralt," whispered Calanthe. "Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. ~ C.S. Lewis

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. ~ C.S. Lewis

... we can define concept as a logical, mental construction of one or more relationships. [...] It is purely mental, is logical, and can be described; it has been reasoned through sufficiently and presented with clarity. As such, a concept is inherently abstract (takes some things as given or assumed) ~ Don E. Ethridge

He took off for the mysterious end of the canal where, moving the handle with ever-increasing speed, he has been running, insanely, to this day, steadily decreasing his volume in the hope that he may, one day, penetrate and disappear into micro-infinity. ~ Urmuz

For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous. ~ Anthony Bourdain

If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries. ~ Helen Clark

Ours has been an expansionist society, but that narrative must change as we run out of places to expand into. But our culture is like a cart stuck in the same old rut that has been leading us in one direction. The longer we've been using a path, the deeper the ruts get, the harder it is to escape them. We've been moving ever Westward, but there's only so far we can go in that direction before we fall into the ocean. It's a direction that we cannot continue on forever, but the breaking of those ruts will require a major rupture. The old narrative is dying, and it will be quite a crushing of gears before things are re-adjusted. A shared story is needed for a civilization to endure. ~ James Rozoff

Let me tell you something - being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory. ~ Halle Berry

Indeed, the city has been excavated continuously by German archaeologists since 1906 (Kuhrt 2010, 1:234). Hattusa was located both within the center of Anatolia and the middle of the Hittite territory in a strategic hill-top position (van de Mieroop 2007, 121). As such, Hattusa was the center of Hittite religion (discussed further in depth below), and it was ideally located in the middle of Anatolia's agricultural breadbasket ~ Charles River Editors

Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings. It will not develop our awareness or add to the sum of our knowledge and intelligence. Read parts of a newspaper quickly or an encyclopaedia entry, or a fast-food thriller, but do not insult yourself or a book which has been created with its author's painstakingly acquired skill and effort, by seeing how fast you can dispose of it. ~ Susan Hill

I was beginning to feel that there would never be another American uprising, that the energy was gone, and I have some reasons to think that might be true. I like to point out that the crime rate in America has been declining for a long time, and in my opinion it's because Americans don't even have enough gumption to commit crimes anymore: the creative aspect of crime has fallen into decay. As for the uprising that takes a principled stand against violence, hats off to them, I admire the idealism, but I don't think it's going to accomplish much. ~ Hakim Bey

A man who has been an animal has infinitely more knowledge of that animal than a man who has merely dissected one. ~ Jack Sharkey

This Sabbath day has been designated as a day of thanksgiving, a day of gratitude-even a day of prayer. We pause, we ponder, we reflect on the blessings an all-wise Heavenly Father has bestowed upon us, His children, by bringing peace to the battlefield of war and comfort to the hearts of so many in this wonderful world where we live and which we call home ~ Thomas S. Monson

Our breathing has been a friend that has accompanied us through every moment of life; it has never deserted us no matter how terrible we have felt. Friendship in itself connotes a quality of feelings that has elements of warmth, trust, and welcome. Our hearts always relax when we greet a friend.
Mandala of Being, Richard Moss MD ~ Richard Moss

We've taken disturbances and fluctuations and averaged them together to give us comfortable statistics. Our training has been to look for big numbers, important trends, major variances. Yet it is the slight variations - soft-spoken, even whispered at first - that we need to encourage. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment. ~ Bernie Sanders

There is scarcely a single joy or sorrow within the experience of our fellow-creatures which we have not tasted; yet the belief, in the good and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medicine to us in sickness, richness in poverty, and the best part of all that ever delighted us in health and success. ~ Leigh Hunt

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. ~ Michael R. Underwood

Dad's voice falters as he says goodbye. He is choking down his own grief to protect Mum, I know. He loves her deeply. I accept that he is incapable of expressing all this, and I am incapable of even saying the right thing, should he ever do so. And lurking deeper, is the knowledge that he has been here, himself. When I was aged about 5, his father - my grandfather - had cancer and took his own life by walking into the sea. My dad found his body under a jetty. What would it have been like to experience that tragedy? And then, to try and live, to go on raising a family, with those images haunting you? ~ Linda Collins

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? ~ Truman Capote

I really ought to have recognized it for what it was and, perhaps, to have stopped right there - for it was nostalgia, and what inspires nostalgia has been dead a long time ~ Michael Chabon

My life has been like a battlefield, a war that could never be won unless I had her with me, and the day she died my battlefront stepped down and threw away their shields, allowing the gunshots to slip through the second her heart stopped beating. From that moment onwards I was left wounded, and for those seventeen years without her my wounds bled-wounds no stitch could ever repair. ~ Rebecah McManus

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It's never as good the second time. Things don't get better. You can't always go back, a lot of it has been erased. The photograph is a record of it having existed. ~ George A Tice

Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes; and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden. ~ William Whewell

Like representative government, soccer has been imported from England and democratized in the United States. It has become the great social and athletic equalizer for suburban America. From kindergarten, girls are placed on equal footing with boys. In the fall, weekend soccer games are a prevalent in suburbia as yard sales. Girls have their own leagues, or they play with boys, and they suffer from no tradition that says that women will grow up professionally to be less successful than men.

'In the United States, not only are girls on equal footing, but the perception now is that American women can be better than American men,' said Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 'That's a turning point, a huge breakthrough in perception. ~ Jere Longman

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! ~ Andy Andrews

Most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry ... There is progress of California toward building new construction according to earthquake-resistant design. We would have less reason to ask for earthquake prediction if this was universal. ~ Charles Francis Richter

Mecca has been banned for Christians for hundreds of years. ~ Kwasi Kwarteng

You wait a lifetime to meet someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that someone, all along, has been you. ~ Richard Bach

During the whole campaign, from June 27 to July 31, there has been no shirking or hesitation, to tiring on the part of a single man so far as I have seen; the brigade commanders reported none. ~ John Buford

This is a faithless old world. Men and women are hardheaded, pleasure-mad, money crazy. They write up their successes and say, "The power and might of my hand have done these things." God has been ruled out; consequently, the thrill and romance of true living are gone for most people. ~ Lee Roberson

If you make me your president, I'm going to put the country ahead of the party. I'm going to do what it takes to defend this nation. This nation has been great to me, and that's the only way I know to pay you back. ~ Lindsey Graham

Far from the richest rapper, but my biggest personal achievement thus far in my life has been retiring my mom early from her job at the Post Office. It's a tiny payback for the sacrifices she made that allowed me to chase a far-fetched dream of becoming a successful artist. I'm forever grateful, ~ J. Cole

Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there. ~ A.W. Tozer

Bodybuilding has been the tool that single-handedly taught a little black boy from the projects to use his mind to achieve success. it taught me to see things for what they can be. I had 17-inch arms; I imagined them to be 24 inches. The power of my mind allowed me to achieve what I imagined. ~ Kai Greene

I think prices have been moving more on speculation than reality. But this is a market that has been driven by fear for two or three years. ~ James Williams

How do we represent female pain without producing a culture in which this pain has been fetishized to the point of fantasy or imperative? ~ Leslie Jamison

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see. ~ Muhammad Yunus

What has been done to you is one thing. Yet to really suffer, to truly be burdened with guilt and shame, such pain always begins not with what has been done to you - but with what you have done. André Chevalier ~ Nikki Sex

The American government has been harvesting the Middle Eastern grapes of wrath for a generation and not making a secret of it, either. As lousy as the mass media may be, there was enough news about what was transpiring, year after year, to get the gist of what was happening ... No American can truthfully say that they could not find out what was going on ... ~ Nicholas Von Hoffman

The doxology moves then to assert that Israel is forever and Yahweh's commitment to Israel is also forever. We had better approach any such doxology suspiciously.
The word "forever" is a clue word, because when it occurs we are likely dealing with state truth.23 That point would perhaps not be noticeable if Yahweh were forever. But it is the people Israel who are said to be "forever." By such a rhetorical move, the main jeopardy from the dreaded God has been removed for the dynasty. Yahweh has now been claimed as a friendly and reliable patron for the regime.
When doxology is used in the context of state truth, it has a political function. Ostensibly it enhances God, but when used as it is used here, it has a political function. Praise of God is by necessary implication praise of and legitimization of the regime. So the "foreverness" is processed as a dynastic claim. The ~ Walter Brueggemann

Some of us believe humanity should be in divine partnership with nature, some people believe that man has been given by God the right to have dominion over nature. But since even they say that we should be good stewards, that right there should be the common ground. ~ Marianne Williamson

We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant. ~ Oscar Wilde

I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

I think the biggest change has been realizing I now have three children. ~ Katey Sagal

One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It's one or the other. One doesn't love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn't know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn't know God. ~ Ayn Rand

Gladys, darling, light of my life. There are principles higher than mere survival. It's not enough to live this life; there must be a quality to living. There are minimum standards. If a man can't get an upgrade when almost every other guest in the entire hotel has been brutally murdered, then something is wrong. ~ M. Suddain

Al Gonzales is a dedicated public servant and exceptionally qualified to be our nation's next Attorney General. I know that a lot has been said about Judge Gonzales' life story. It is a story of the fulfillment of the American Dream. ~ Mel Martinez

Victims of abuse, your trust has been violated and corrupted. It will take time to heal this wound, be patient and brave. ~ Tracy Malone

Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one. ~ John Maynard Keynes

We live in the information age and the sheer volume of it being available everywhere, creates a need for information that has value. Yes, we can look anything up on Google but who has the time? Can we trust that the information comes from a trustworthy source? Your experience has given you a deep knowing of your subject matter. You have insights and ideas that others may not figure out on their own. You are holding a roadmap that has great value to someone. What has been stopping you from sharing your knowledge? Perhaps you have been afraid to put yourself out there because of a fear of rejection? Let me get straight to the point. Get over it right now! Ponder the following quote for a moment and then move on with the decision to write rather than not to write, because not to write is not "to be". You deny yourself and your audience. You have had an incredible journey to get to where you are and have amassed experience and knowledge. Now combine that with your unique voice and be heard. You are already an expert. Accept it. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

One of the strengths of the DC Universe has been the strength of the rogues' gallery. Often times they're as famous - if not more infamous - than our heroes. ~ Jim Lee

I have used all the manure that has been thrown on me as fertilizer to make me stronger. ~ Eartha Kitt

Spockian parents feel it's their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, and although what this leads to may look like "permissiveness," it's actually more totalitarian, for the child no longer has a private sphere. His entire being has been taken over by parental aspirations.

. ~ Philip Slater

Much has been written on the subject of bed-books. The general consensus of opinion is that a gentle, slow-moving story makes the best opiate ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. ~ Solomon

no woman tastes like honey- but every man should tell the woman he is with that she does. every woman I have ever known intimately has been inhibited and self conscious about the way their pussy might taste to a man. All I know is that women relax and let themselves go sexually once a man reassures her that he loves the way she tastes. ~ Jason Luke

It's not just the NFL. Every other league has a draft. It has been fundamental to the success of professional sports. ~ Roger Goodell

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on ~ C.S. Lewis

One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. ~ Terry Eagleton

It was "not so much the [lack of] leisure, but also the nervous tension. One comes back to one's native land and sees that one has been abandoned." - Antheil ~ Richard Rhodes

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before - I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.
I've felt angry and sentimental.
I've loved. I've been loved back.
Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?
I'm a little exhausted. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio ... well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else ... My state of being has been elevated, because I've been exercising, writing songs ... No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person's masterpiece is something that you nurture along. ~ Brian Wilson

When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that you must not hesitate. ~ Dag Hammarskjold

When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad. ~ Jeanne DuPrau

Do you not see what damage has been done to science through this: i.e. pedants wishing to be philosophers; to treat of natural things, and mix themselves with and decide about things Divine? ~ Giordano Bruno

Those who claim that any woman can reprogram her consciousness if only she is sufficiently determined hold a shallow view of the nature of patriarchal oppression. Anything done can be undone, it is implied; nothing has been permanently damaged, nothing irretrievably lost. But this is tragically false. One of the evils of a system of oppression is that it may damage people in ways that cannot always be undone. Patriarchy invades the intimate recesses of personality where it may maim and cripple the spirit forever. ~ Sandra Lee Bartky

Ah, many a one has started forth with hope and purpose high; Has fought throughout a weary life, and passed all pleasure by; Has burst all flowery chains by which men aye have been enthralled; Has been stone-deaf to voices sweet, that softly, sadly called; Has scorned the flashing goblet with the bubbles on its brim; Has turned his back on jewelled hands that madly beckoned him; Has, in a word, condemned himself to follow out his plan By stern and lonely labor
and has died, a conquered man! ~ George Arnold

There has been only one Christian. They caught and curcified him-early. ~ Mark Twain

For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me - as a girl and later as a woman - to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life. ~ Lisa See

My feeling is unless they've somebody lined up and they are convinced he is going to be better than Brian, I think their decision has been made in haste. ~ Mark Lawrenson

I'm happy when I write. I've written my first novel, my pencil is down. My last work has been written. No turning back. No more hesitation. I'm writing my future one page at a time. Inspire. Dream. Live. Breath. Happy. Succeed. ~ Missy Salick

Xbox has been created by gamers for gamers. ~ Don Mattrick

Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. ~ Emma Goldman

Now I'm just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn't lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn't lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her. ~ Isaac Marion

It is his fate to enter every door. This has been willed where what is willed must be, and is not yours to question. Say no more. ~ Dante Alighieri

He does not always remain bent over the
pages; he often leans back and closes
his eyes over a line he has been reading
again, and its meaning spreads through
his blood. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Some philosophers are drawn to the subject [of philosophy] via their interest in the nature and structure of the world external to us. Others are drawn to it by an interest in the capacities that make humans distinctive in the world. I am a philosopher of the latter sort. My work thus far has been clustered around the nexus of knowledge, communication, and human action. ~ Jason Stanley

I always think it's better to be not taking drugs or drinking or anything. That's not saying I've never done it because I have. But I sort of learned I think after a while there has been - it didn't take me that long to realize that it wasn't a good thing. ~ Mick Jagger

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one that you ARE living. ~ Joseph Campbell

I wonder how many times we've been on this precipice only to delete what we can't understand. And then thinking we can just copy it back, and find that it's been lost. I wonder if this is why downloading the human consciousness has been such a dead end. Like there's some bit of complexity there that can't survive duplication. ~ Hugh Howey

When happy, we possess something we love; when anxious, something we love is at risk; when despondent, something we love has been lost; when angry, something we love is being stolen or kept from us. ~ Edward T. Welch

Before this grief, mountains must bend down
And rivers stop,
But prison locks are strong,
And behind them are the labor-camp bunks
And the deadly tedium.
For others the fresh breeze is blowing,
For others the extravagant sun sets -
For us everything is the same, we know nothing,
We hear only the keys and their hateful grinding.
Only the soldiers' stiff steps.
We get up as for early Mass in the city,
The savaged city, and coming
We meet ourselves, the dead, the unbreathing.
The sun is low, the Neva misty,
It is only in the distance that hope is singing.
The sentence . . . and at once tears,
Now everything has been taken,
The rest of life, torn from her heart,
Knocked backwards by a hoodlum
And yet she walks . . . stumbles . . . alone . . .
Where are they now, unwilling friends
Of years in Hell?
What visions do they see in Siberian snow-storms?
What hallucinations in the circle of the moon?
I send them this goodbye and wish them well. ~ Anna Akhmatova