February 2013
1 post
January 2013
17 posts
“You can learn a lot about people from the stories they tell, but you can also know them from the way they sing along, whether they like the windows up or down, if they live by the map or by the world, if they feel the pull of the ocean.”
—David Levithan | Every Day (via blogut)
“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.”
—George Eliot (via kari-shma)
“Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.”
—Dalai Lama XIV (via kari-shma)
“Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.”
—The Lover’s Dictionary, David Levithan (via commovente)
“One of the most amazing things that can happen is finding someone who sees everything you are and won’t let you be anything less. They see the potential of you. They see endless possibilities. And through their eyes, you start to see yourself the same way as someone who matters. As someone who can make a difference in the world.”
—So Much Closer by Susane Colosanti (via quote-book)
“That’s what real love amounts to—letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending, performing. You get to love your pretence. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act—and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.”
—Jim Morrison (via quote-book)
“We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn’t it? But if we can’t understand time, can’t grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history – even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?”
—Julian Barnes | The Sense of an Ending (via blogut)
“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”
—Leo Tolstoy (via creatingaquietmind)
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
—Roald Dahl, The Minpins (via girlwithoutwings)
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
— The Fault In Our Stars, John Green (via quote-book)
10 Favourite Articles →
tetw.tumblr.com
tetw:
As chosen by Sharon Shasha
A selection of favourites chosen by avid reader of articles about science, nature, politics and social issues, Sharon Shasha:
The Kingdom of Silence by Lawrence Wright - An eye-opening article about Saudi Arabia written in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Apostate by Lawrence Wright - A vivid exposé of Scientology.
The Story of a Suicide by Ian Parker This piece about Tyler Clementi’s suicide was like one of those Greek tragedies you watch powerlessly as it unfolds towards its inevitable conclusion.
Slavery’s last stronghold by John D. Sutter - As we applaud ourselves for consigning slavery to the dustbin of history, in Mauritania, it is still practically an institution.
The Lethal Gene by Jeff Wheelwright - A great mix of science and history exploring the interplay between genes and environment in shaping our lives. A fascinating subject with profound moral and even existential implications.
A Fin is a Limb is a Wing by Carl Zimmer - How evolution builds complexity by tinkering with what’s already there.
Rhino Wars by Peter Gwin - The cruelest of ironies: The indiscriminate killing of endangered animals to feed demand for quack remedies that can cause further deaths.
What Makes Us Happy? by Joshua Wolf Shenk - An unbearably poignant article that puts the goal of happiness, in and of itself, into doubt: The unexamined life is not worth living, but may be the most conducive to happiness.
The Girls Next Door by Amy Fine Collins - A piece that challenges many of the assumptions about the legalization of prostitution, which I hope will serve as a call to action.
Born in the Gulag by Blaine Harden - A horrifying story of life inside the world’s most secretive state.
And as a special bonus, a couple of documentaries (they’re like essays, but with moving pictures): Louis Theroux’s disturbing Westboro Baptist Church series, and the great NOVA about creationism in Dover.For links to loads more interesting reads, great documentaries and thoughts on the state of the world, check out Sharon’s Tumblr, or look her up on Twitter.
For future reading reference
December 2012
1 post
“The times are so serious that even children should be made to understand that there are vital differences in people’s beliefs which lead to differences in behavior.”
—A Christmas story of hope by Eleanor Roosevelt from the wake of WWII. (via explore-blog)
October 2012
4 posts
Play
Play
Play
July 2012
2 posts
“I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.”
—James Baldwin (via ahorton92)
June 2012
29 posts
Play
“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
—Willa Cather (via girlwithoutwings)
“Most people aren’t trained to want to face the process of re-understanding a subject they already know. One must obtain not just literacy, but deep involvement and re-understanding.”
—Iconic designer Charles Eames in 15 quotes for his 105 birthday this weekend. (via explore-blog)
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
—Mark Twain (via girlwithoutwings)
2 am and counting
The sound of the fan blades turning here in my room reminds me of rain showers, heavy downpour not unlike the one that greeted us yesterday morning.
I have mixed feelings about rain & rainy days. right now, for some reason, the thought of rain pouring any time soon scares me. I had to turn the fan off to make sure that it wasn’t really raining.
Anyway, good night. must get ready to sleep. ;-)
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
—Toni Morrison (via girlwithoutwings)
Yes
“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (via julie911)
On years
sleep all sleep all day?
This weather is perfect for sleeping in. I could do that but my original intent was to start my day early and get on with my laundry, room cleaning, and alltheotherstuffthatneedtogetdone.
just because it’s a holiday (happy independence day Pilipinas!) doesn’t mean that there’s no work for me today. In fact, it started early with me and bry rescuing magnum (aka maggie, magpie - the dog) from the rain and me making a makeshift leash for her as we tied her to her new area. That was at five friggin thirty in the morning!
Mom is probably the only morning person in our household (hmm but then again, not really) so she’s awake right now preparing breakfast. (I’ll volunteer to prepare lunch later!) Bry went back to sleep right after the magnum ordeal and is now happily napping. I think I’ll follow suit. NOW. Can’t afford to sleep all day but I will sleep some more today, hey. :-p
byeZzzzz.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
—
Albert Einstein
(via)
“Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.”
—Toni Morrison,Beloved (via imfantasyparade)
“Which among us cannot say that some of our greatest learnings have come from mistakes we’ve made? A mistake can teach us something we never forget; it spotlights an area for growth. Can you let yourself experience the perfection of your imperfection? Nurturing yourself by accepting you will fail at times doesn’t mean you don’t try to avoid failures. But when they come you refuse self-judgement. You let past mistakes be just that—past. Your attitude is that yesterday ended last night. You recognize that there is a statute of limitations on past errors and refuse to wallow in self-punishment year after year.”
—Dorothy Briggs, (via blua)
“I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) | via mynameismystery (via quote-book)
“Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want.”
—Esther Hicks (via blua)
… So don’t worry too much. Be happy. :-)
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
—Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales | via mynameismystery (via quote-book)
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (via imfantasyparade)
“You might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physically or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
—Bruce Lee (via CaptainofCrunch)
