Struggle For Existence Quotes

Infectious disease is one of the great tragedies of living things - the struggle for existence between two different forms of life... Incessantly, the pitiless war goes on, without quarter or armistice - a nationalism of species against species. ~ Hans Zinsser

In every new generation, the impulses supposed to have been rooted out by discipline in the child break forth again when the struggle for existence - of the individual in society, of the society in the life of the state - begins. These passions are not transformed by the prevalent education of the day, but only repressed. ~ Ellen Key

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection. ~ Charles Darwin

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. ~ Jack London

The struggle for existence and hatred are the only things that unite people. ~ Leo Tolstoy

There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: what must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition of the Christian nations. For example, in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and especially Rousseau. But in more recent times, since Hegel's assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards. The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzche's half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

Turgenev made the witty remark that there are inver ~ Leo Tolstoy

The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. ~ Jack London

All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Where the conditions to which material progress... are most fully realized... where wealth is greatest... we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most enforced idleness... Material progress does not merely fail to relieve poverty - it actually produces it... This association of progress with poverty is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world and with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. ~ Henry George (Progress And Poverty, 1884)

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Peter suspects that the caltrop is evolving in response to the finches. Where the struggle for existence is fierce, the caltrop that is likeliest to succeed is the plant that puts more energy into spines and less into seeds; but in the safer, more secluded spot, the fittest plants are the ones that put more energy into making seeds and less energy into protecting them. The finches may be driving the evolution of caltrop while caltrop is driving the evolution of the finches. ~ Jonathan Weiner

Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer. ~ Frank Herbert

Man's greatest advances are weapon advances. Culture follows from weaponry, we are militant like the animals and birds - defending our homes. No matter how far back you go in history, along with the struggle for existence, along with the survival necessities - kill or be killed, eat or be eaten - there is a hunger for something spiritual. He invents God, prayers, incantations to something above him. Why? This is not brought out - this is not weapon culture. ~ Frank Capra

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. ~ August Weismann

But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The feeling of solidarity is the leading characteristic of all animals living in society. The eagle devours the sparrow, the wolf devours the marmot. But the eagles and the wolves respectively aid each other in hunting, the sparrow and the marmot unite among themselves against the beasts and birds of prey so effectually that only the very clumsy ones are caught. In all animal societies solidarity is a natural law of far greater importance than that struggle for existence, the virtue of which is sung by the ruling classes in every strain that may best serve to stultify us. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to 'save' feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature's will is scorned. ~ Adolf Hitler

The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our culture for several hundred years, during which it has shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of the world. This paradigm consists of a number of entrenched ideas and values, among them the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building-blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth, and - last, not least - the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male is one that follows a basic law of nature. ~ Fritjof Capra

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. ~ Oscar Wilde

Nature is only terrible or squalid to those who do not understand her, and when misunderstanding has upset her balance. She is imbued above all with the power of love; by love she can after all be conquered, but in no other way. That has not been our way. We have attempted a less excellent way, and have upset the 'balance of nature,' so that she no longer appears to us in pleasant guise but in a guise in which the appearance of an opposition of forces - a 'struggle for existence' - predominates over the appearance of a balance of forces. So we have come to believe in a struggle for existence as the only possibility, and we infer that any such struggle is necessarily painful. It is painful now, and not only to ourselves. But it was not always so and need not always be so. We are the head and have the responsibility. We have tried to conquer nature by force and by intellect. It now remains for us to try the way of love ~ Walter Ernest Christopher James

I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. ~ Charles Darwin

In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. ~ G.K. Chesterton

No society can survive if it allows its members to behave toward one another in the same way in which it encourages them to behave as a group toward other groups; internal cooperation is the first law of external competition. The struggle for existence is not ended by mutual aid, it is incorporated, or transferred to the group. Other things equal, the ability to compete with rival groups will be proportionate to the ability of the individual members and families to combine with one another.
Hence every society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual, as its secret allies and aides, social dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages by calling them virtues those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices.
In this way the individual is in some outward measure socialized, and the animal becomes a citizen. ~ Will Durant

The struggle for existence is a struggle 'for' something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and
there you have it: Holocaust ~ Richard Weikart

All life is a struggle for existence. Why should it cease to be a struggle if it spreads among the stars? ~ Ken MacLeod

Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before a few intrepid seekers after truth: it is rather an ambulance following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up the weak and wounded. ~ Bertrand Russell

All statistics consist of our attempts to represent statistically what is in motion; and in the process things assume a weight in our mind which they have not in reality. For this reason a man, who by his profession is concerned with any particular aspect of life, is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stress upon facts he loses his hold upon truth. A detective may have the opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses his sense of their relative places in the whole social economy. When science collects facts to illustrate the struggle for existence that is going on in the kingdom of life, it raises a picture in our minds of "nature red in tooth and claw." But in these mental pictures we give a fixity to colours and forms which are really evanescent. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Little girls ought to be taught and brought up with boys, so that they might be always together. A woman ought to be trained so that she may be able, like a man, to recognise when she's wrong, or she always thinks she's in the right. Instil into a little girl from her cradle that a man is not first of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neighbour, her equal in everything. Train her to think logically, to generalise, and do not assure her that her brain weighs less than a man's and that therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts, to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice to the shoemaker or the house painter has a brain of smaller size than the grown-up man too, yet he works, suffers, takes his part in the general struggle for existence. We must give up our attitude to the physiological aspect, too -- to pregnancy and childbirth, seeing that in the first place women don't have babies every month; secondly, not all women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works in the fields up to the day of her confinement and it does her no harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality in everyday life. If a man gives a lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she has dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have no objection if a girl of good family helps me to put on my coat or hands me a glass of water -- ~ Anton Chekhov

In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection. ~ Charles Darwin

Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. ~ Charles Darwin

Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature ~ Idries Shah

I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. ~ Charles Darwin

The setting, concerns, and mood of The Woodlanders are consonant with the Wessex of the earlier novels. There is an element of nostalgia in Hardy's treatment of the woodlands of Little Hintock. Although such rural economies were very much alive in Hardy's day, he strikes an elegiac note in his evocation of a world that will inevitably pass away. However, the woodlands do not form the backdrop to an idyllic pastoral of humanity living in tranquil harmony with nature. The trees, which are such a dominant presence in the novel, compete with each other for nourishment and light, are vulnerable to disease and damage, and are frightening in their moaning under the lash of the storm. The woodlands represent the Darwinian struggle for existence that Hardy sees as extending not only to the inhabitants of this little world but also beyond ... ~ Geoffrey Harvey

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence. ~ Charles Darwin

The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence. [ ... ] The objective of this battle must be the demolition of present-day Russia and must therefore be conducted with unprecedented severity. Every military action must be guided in planning and execution by an iron resolution to exterminate the enemy remorselessly and totally. In particular, no adherents of the contemporary Russian Bolshevik system are to be spared. ~ Franz Halder

The general struggle for existence of animate beings is not a struggle for raw materials, these for organisms are air water & soil, all abundantly available, nor for energy which exists in plenty in the sun and any hot body in the form of heat, but rather a struggle for entropy, which becomes available through the transition of energy from the hot sun to the cold earth. ~ Ludwig Boltzmann

Man's triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The mystery of this courage of Bauer's is Hegel's Phenomenology. As Hegel here puts self-consciousness in the place of man, the most varied human reality appears only as a definite form, as a determination of self-consciousness. But a mere determination of self-consciousness is a "pure category," a mere "thought" which I can consequently also abolish in "pure" thought and overcome through pure thought. In Hegel's Phenomenology the material, perceptible, objective bases of the various estranged forms of human self-consciousness are left as they are. Thus the whole destructive work results in the most conservative philosophy because it thinks it has overcome the objective world, the sensuously real world, by merely transforming it into a "thing of thought" a mere determination of self-consciousness and can therefore dissolve its opponent, which has become ethereal, in the "ether of pure thought." Phenomenology is therefore quite logical when in the end it replaces human reality by "Absolute Knowledge" - Knowledge, because this is the only mode of existence of self-consciousness, because self-consciousness is considered as the only mode of existence of man; absolute knowledge for the very reason that self-consciousness knows itself alone and is no more disturbed by any objective world. Hegel makes man the man of self-consciousness instead of making self-consciousness the self-consciousness of man, of real man, man living in a real objective world and determined by that world. He ~ Karl Marx

Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness
pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like
have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject ... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world. ~ Zeno Vendler

The child raised for his station, never leaving it, could not be exposed to the disadvantages of another. But given the mobility of human things, given the unsettled and restless spirit of this age which upsets everything in each generation, can one conceive of a method more senseless than raising a child as though he never had to leave his room, as though he were going to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the unfortunate makes a single step on the earth, if he goes down a single degree, he is lost. This is not teaching him to bear suffering; it is training him to feel it. One thinks only of preserving one's child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to preserve himself as a man. to bear the blows of fate, to brave opulence and poverty, to live, if he has to. in freezing Iceland or on Malta's burning rocks. You may very well take precautions against his dying. He will nevertheless have to die. And though his death were not the product of your efforts, still these efforts would be ill conceived. It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is best to be born in April or August when the life-giving Sun is in its exaltation sign Aries or Leo, its home, for then we enter the sea of life on the crest-wave and are backed in the battle of existence by an abundant fund of vim and energy. ~ Max Heindel

In a harsh, cruel world where success is only measured by financial income, the higher moral values are getting lost and forgotten. No one counts your efforts, good deeds, struggle, and giving unless if these deeds make money. Money nowadays, unfortunately, is the fake God everyone follows. If you make solid profits you are a human being worth respect, but if you are struggling and working so hard in life, yet your struggle and good deeds don't make you the money you need, you only worth neglecting.
For all those who struggle to live another day by doing the right thing, hang in there, God is with you and better days are coming too by God's will. ~ Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

Even into the 20th century, women were still struggling in the Western world for rights that Islam had granted women in the 7th century: equal rights to education; the right to own and inherit property; to have a voice in the decisions affecting their lives; to be active, engaged, and valued members of society at all levels. ~ Queen Noor Of Jordan

A man can love too.'
'No; -- hardly. He can admire, and he can like, and he can fondle and be fond. He can admire and approve, and perhaps worship. He can know of a woman that she is part of himself, the most sacred part, and therefore will protect her from the very winds. But all that will not make love. It does not come to a man that to be separated from a woman is to be dislocated from his very self. A man has but one centre, and that is himself. A woman has two. Though the second may never been seen by her, may live in the arms of another, may do all for that other that man can do for woman, -- still, still, though he be half the globe asunder from her, still he is to her the half of her existence. If she really love, there is, I fancy no end of it. ~ Anthony Trollope

LIVE like someone, somewhere is always monitoring your existence, 'because they are - some wise who are living know all too well that freedom and rest are truly deeded in the mental realm of those blessed to take up residence there - for there is no monitoring system needed from the grave... ~ Tracey Bond

Mysticism has often been misunderstood as the attempt to escape this simple, phenomenal world to a more pure existence in heaven beyond. This is not mysticism, but Gnosticism. Biblical mysticism is the attempt to exit 'this world' to an alternative reality that pervades the old order. Its goal is to jettison the mind-set that says 'greed is good,' selfishness is normal,' and 'killing is necessary.' Mysticism in biblical terms is not escapism, as so many have caricatured it, but a fight for ethics and social change. ~ Walter Wink

Every copywriter knows what it is to struggle with a copy for hours, for days - fixing it, polishing it, rearranging it. We have all been quilty of leaving the headline until the last and the spending half and hour on it - or perhaps only ten minutes. ~ John Caples

And again that big, bushy thing of hers worked its bloom and magic. It began to have an independent existence for me too. There was Germaine and there was that rose bush of hers.. I liked them separately and I liked them together. ~ Henry Miller

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. ~ Barry Lopez

The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Since all living beings are bound by their craving for existence, you must begin by finding the determination to be free. ~ Je Tsongkhapa

If the fallen lord had ever once lived with a sense of moral goodness in his whole long existence, he had certainly lost it all ... with his craven madness for domination." ~Roe'vaash "Then'diel's SONG ~ K. Farrell St. Germain

I wrote mostly about men. I hadn't interviewed a lot of women. Whenever I did, the stories were always about the struggle to be the kind of woman who got interviewed - the writers who were counted out, the politicians who were mistaken for secretaries, the actresses who were told they were too fat and tall and short and skinny and ugly and pretty. It was all the same story, which is not to say it wasn't important. But it was boring. The first time I interviewed a man, I understood we were talking about something more like the soul.

The men hadn't had any external troubles. They didn't have a fear that they didn't belong. They hadn't had any obstacles. They were born knowing they belonged, and they were reassured at every turn just in case they'd forgotten. But they were still creative and still people, and so they reached for problems out of an artistic sense of yearning. Their problems weren't real. They had no identity struggle, no illness, no money fears. Instead, they had found the true stuff of their souls - of all our souls - the wound lying beneath all the survivalism and circumstance. pg 233 ~ Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence. ~ Richard Dawkins

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool. ~ Katherine Dunn

Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations, and occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts. ~ Mary Douglas

Not long after Chris died, a national magazine published a story comparing his life with that of the man accused of killing him. There are some parallels; they both grew up in Texas. But the article skimped on the differences. Look at the decisions they made, look at what they did with their lives, look at the responsibilities they took on--or shirked.
Chris saw a great deal of combat. He never made excuses for his behavior. He didn't always do the right thing, but he tried to do the right thing by others. Chris got the good grace, as Abel did, not by his birthright, but by his effort.
As I sat listening to the prosecutor, I thought his parallel extended through Chris's life--not solely to the man who shot him, but to the haters, to the people who ended up in legal disputes with him or his estate, for whatever reason. They all wanted something he had.
Not money, but authenticity. Real achievements. Soul.
Grace.
And of course that's the one thing you can't take from someone else, even if you steal his life.
Chris became famous without wanting to. Opportunities that others had to fight and claw for seemed to fall in his lap. But most of all, people just liked him for being who he was, with seemingly no effort on his part at all.
Of course, there was effort, and there was great struggle. He had to persevere--The Navy didn't want him at all when he first tried to enlist. But people don't see that part. They don't see the long days at BUD/S, or ~ Taya Kyle

Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one's own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being - or even with being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image -look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extraversion without depth, a sort of self-promot­ing ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Some people act as if there were a penalty for carrying concealed troubles. They exhibit them at every opportunity, begging for sympathy, even condescending to accept pity. Such persons never realize that the very ones to whom they are complaining are often struggling under a burden greater than their own. ~ Alice Hegan Rice

It will not surprise you to learn that it is not uncommon for jockeys who struggle with their weight to starve themselves and spend hours in the sauna to lose a few pounds to be able to make a big-race ride. ~ Tony McCoy

The Arabs were Germany's natural friends ... They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively in the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of the Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq ... ~ Haj Amin Al-Husseini

This feature is reminiscent in my opinion, of certain features of some paintings, where each part reflects other parts and even the whole, with regard to colour, form, composition and other elements which go to make up the picture.

The above idea of the infinite shows already the breakdown of the notion that the world can be divided into separately existing parts. For already, even in this very simple view, an essential aspect of what each part is that it reflects the other parts.

The further extension of the idea of infinity to time leads to an even more radical change. Here, what is suggested is to reverse the usual idea of first imagining time and then saying that things exist and move in time. Rather, we begin with existence and process, and say that time is the order in this process. Thus we define each time concretely as the 'time when' such and such existed, or changed, and each position as the 'place where' it was etc. to carry such a view consistently, we should begin with the concept of totality, which is infinite and eternal. This includes all that there is, was and will be. If we knew this, we would all know reality. We would all know every concrete existent, every law(relationship) and the limits of every law. Of course, we can only select out certain aspects of this totality. Each science reflects some aspect, the arts another, the poet another and so on... ~ David Bohm

If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as if it would satisfy us. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Names generate meaning in a short amount of space - they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level. ~ Joshua Ferris

Every disaster gives a warning before it comes; little or big, there is always a warning! Warnings are the flowers of the existence for you to take. Take them! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Instantly, the noise stopped. The whole room lay in perfect silence. The tire builders stood in long lines, touching each other, perfectly motionless, deafened by the silence ... For the first time in history, American mass-production workers had stopped a conveyor belt and halted the inexorable movement of factory machinery. ~ Ruth McKenney

The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time.



I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole "soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloo ~ Michael Chabon

I have undertaken vengeance. I want Liberty and Equality to reign in Saint-Domingue. I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us, brothers, and fight with us for the same cause. ~ Toussaint Louverture

The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity:

The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory.
The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations.
The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity. ~ Isaac Asimov

The cloth was wrinkled and twisted from the struggle. His forehead was damp, and he lay his forearm across it and stared across the room at the clock. Its pendulum rotated and gathered momentum only to slow and reverse its course. He watched it for a time and slid out of the bed to dress. ~ Dave Newell

The continuing struggle was once described in the following metaphor by a patient who had successfully completed a long course of psychotherapy: 'I came to therapy hoping to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.' (138) ~ Sheldon B. Kopp

The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the church of God to-day. ~ Charles Spurgeon

The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort
"happiness." He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering. ~ Oswald Spengler

Set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business, for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, that to think we shall conquer is to conquer. ~ John Locke

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's. ~ John Mayer