β
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
β
β
Steve Jobs
β
You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfectβyou aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can breakβher heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
I am haunted by humans.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
β
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedomsβto choose oneβs attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose oneβs own way.
β
β
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
β
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
β
β
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
β
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
β
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
β
β
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
β
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
β
β
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
β
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
β
β
Mahatma Gandhi
β
I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?
β
β
Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
β
But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.
β
β
Haruki Murakami
β
The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-canβt-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what theyβre saying is βyou like stuff.β Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, βyou are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousnessβ.
β
β
John Green
β
You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
β
β
Nadezhda Mandelstam (Hope Against Hope)
β
That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.
β
β
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
β
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge youβll never walk alone.
...
We leave you a tradition with a future.
The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete.
People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, youβll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Your βgood old daysβ are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.
β
β
Sam Levenson (In One Era & Out the Other)
β
Crows remember human faces. They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too. They donβt forget. They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3))
β
Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
β
Rhysand stared at me for long enough that I faced him.
"Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don't feel anything at all.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
β
When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows thatβs what everyone else does.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
β
β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
β
That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.
β
β
Stephen King (The Stand)
β
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
β
I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
The moon is a loyal companion.
It never leaves. Itβs always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day itβs a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.
Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
β
The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. (Death)
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway
β
I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A Man Without a Country)
β
The more one judges, the less one loves.
β
β
HonorΓ© de Balzac (Physiologie Du Mariage: Ou Meditations De Philosophie Eclectique, Sur Le Bonheur Et Le Malheur Conjugal)
β
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
β
β
W.B. Yeats (The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats)
β
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)
β
Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.
β
β
Plato (The Symposium)
β
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
β
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
β
β
G.K. Chesterton
β
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: Iβm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I donβt accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic β on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg β or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β
I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
β
β
Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1))
β
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
β
β
Marcus Tullius Cicero
β
Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother's was worth a pocket watch.
β
β
Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray)
β
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
β
β
Herman Melville
β
Well, usually when a person shakes their head,β said McGonagall coldly, βthey mean βno.β So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans...
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.
β
β
Carlos Ruiz ZafΓ³n (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
β
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience)
β
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
β
β
William James
β
All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.
β
β
Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3))
β
This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.
β
β
Robert G. Ingersoll (The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child)
β
I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.
β
β
Jacqueline Harpman (I Who Have Never Known Men)
β
Stuart needs "space" and "time," as if this were physics and not a human relationship.
β
β
Kathryn Stockett (The Help)
β
If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.
β
β
George Orwell (1984)
β
They were monsters!" Rin shrieked. "They were not human!"
"Have you ever considered" he said slowly "that that was exactly what they thought of us?
β
β
R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1))
β
When a person doesnβt have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.
β
β
Elie Wiesel
β
NO. No no no. I don't want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It's so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it's the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. I mean, who you want to screw and whether you screw them? Those are important questions, I guess. But they're not that important. You know what's important? Who would you die for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don't even know why he needs you? Whose drunken nose would you pick?!
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
β
β
Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
β
Some days are better than others, for human optimism has no limits.
β
β
Max Nowaz (The Arbitrator)
β
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
β
β
George Eliot (Adam Bede)
β
Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.
β
β
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
β
Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.
β
β
Shelby Van Pelt (Remarkably Bright Creatures)
β
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft
β
So long as you don't bleed in the shape of wing joints, you should pass for human. Oh, and don't let anyone pick you up. They'll know you're not right as soon as they feel how light you are."
"I'll be sure not to let anyone but you carry me in her arms.
β
β
Susan Ee (Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, #1))
β
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
β
β
James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
β
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?
β
β
Arthur Schopenhauer (Studies in Pessimism: The Essays)
β
Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
β
That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating on anything is very hard work.
β
β
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
β
Gazzy: "What does that mean?" (points to metal plaque warning to stay off the third rail that said Stay off the third rail!)
Fang: "It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it. Touch it and you're human popcorn.
β
β
James Patterson (The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, #1))
β
Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.
β
β
Philip K. Dick
β
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
β
β
Harlan Ellison (I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream)
β
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
β
β
N.H. Kleinbaum (Dead Poets Society)
β
You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.
β
β
John Williams (Stoner)
β
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
β
β
H.G. Wells (The Time Machine)
β
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
β
He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.
β
β
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
β
Living itself is the source of sin.
β
β
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
β
One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of.
β
β
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet)
β
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door β
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; β vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow β sorrow for the lost Lenore β
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore β
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me β filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door β
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; β
This it is, and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" β
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore β
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; β
'Tis the wind and nothing more."
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door β
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door β
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore β
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaningβ little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door β
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)
β
In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
β
β
John Williams (Stoner)
β
The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because heβs too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
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Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
β
No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.
β
β
Dean Koontz (A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog)
β
The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.
β
β
Han Kang (The Vegetarian)
β
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft
β
You know, I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking youβre worth a damn off the courtβ yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know itβs not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know youβre physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I donβt think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.
β
β
Nora Sakavic (The Raven King (All for the Game, #2))
β
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war. And until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war.β
- Popularized by Bob Marley in the song War
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β
Haile Selassie I (Selected Speeches)
β
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, β is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
β
β
John Stuart Mill (Principles of Political Economy (Great Minds Series))