Philosophy:
“Your life will henceforth be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own heroism, and your own suffering; but in the end that suffering will be softened and will pass into sweet contemplation of the fulfilment of a bold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
— Herman Hesse, Siddharta (der surchende a “CONTACT”)
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Vol II Chapter II: “The Girl”
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
LoTR:
All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes of fire shall be woken
A light from the shadow shall spring
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes of fire shall be woken
A light from the shadow shall spring
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.
RIVENDELL: I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
"If you have walked all these days with closed ears and mind asleep, wake up now!" - Gandalf
Be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.
“PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Fight Club/Taxi Driver:
Tyler Durden: Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler.
Travis Bickle: The days go on and on... they don't end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.
Travis Bickle: The days go on and on... they don't end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.
Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Tyler Durden: Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
Travis Bickle: The days go on and on... they don't end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.
Khaled Hosseini:
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the 'VOLUME' knob on life. Silence is pushing the 'OFF' button. Shutting it down. All of it.
I think we are all waiting, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with the pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
I think we are all waiting, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
Miscellaneous:
"Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!" - Jerome K Jerome
In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
— John Steinbeck in his 1938 journal entry
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. --FRANZ KAFKA
People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.
- J. Michael Straczynski
The world needs all you can give. - E O Wilson
Vioence begets violence. When someone loses hope, he is devastated, and he will say, "Either I fight, or I leave this world." --A Nigerian University Lecturer