September, out of context
this month's quotables
Each day I pause to write down the things that bring me joy: the places where I experience happiness (‘found joy’) and the places where I contribute to the happiness of others (‘brought joy’).
I also use this notebook to collect random quotes that I find interesting or meaningful or that stand out. At the end of each month I’ll post these random quotes, shared out of context.
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. (Jorge Luis Borges)
When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent. (Issac Asimov)
My advice is that if you must be selfish, be wisely selfish. Wise people serve others sincerely, putting the needs of others above their own. Ultimately you will be happier. (the Dalai Lama)
We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. (James Baldwin)
Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else? (Mary Oliver)
Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that. (Kamala Harris)
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. (James Thurber)
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to believe them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
The iron law of sobriety, with apologies to Leo Tolstoy: the stories of addicts are all alike; but each person gets sober their own way. Addiction is an old country song: you lose the dog, lose the truck, lose the high school sweetheart. In recovery you play the song backward, and that’s where things get interesting. Where’d you find the truck? Did the dog remember you? What’d your sweetheart say when they saw you again? (Kaveh Akbar)
Sonder — n. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
Lord, increase my bewilderment. (Sufi prayer)
Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me?Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes. (Clarice Lispector)
We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side. (Charlie Munger)
I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them. (Sylvia Plath)
I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. (Byron Katie)
It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve. (Georgia O’Keeffe)
One usually gets better at whatever one does on a regular basis. If one does not write on a regular basis, one will get better at not writing. In fact, one will develop an astonishing array of skills designed to improve and extend one’s not writing. (Gavin Lamb)
If the concept of God has any validity or any use it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it's high time we got rid of him. (James Baldwin)
One of the curses of history is that we cannot go back and change the course leading to disasters, no matter how much we might wish to. The past has its own terrible inevitability. But it is never too late to change the future. (Heather Cox Richardson)
Plant seeds for future joys. (Suleika Jaouad)
You have only to let it happen: / that cry — release, release, like the moon / wrenched out of earth and rising / full in its circle of arrows (Louise Glück)
I dunno if MomTok will survive this. (Secret Lives of Mormon Wives)
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you think that thought?
Who would you be without that thought? (Byron Katie)
Step aside from all thinking, and there is nowhere you can’t go. (Seng-ts’an)
The marvels and mysteries of identification come to an ultimate focus in that scarcely-noticeable, workaday pronoun, ‘we.’ (Kenneth Burke)
The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees. (Octavia E. Butler)
For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair. (bell hooks)
Life moves pretty fast when you don’t look up, mate. (Beau Miles)
"In fact, one will develop an astonishing array of skills designed to improve and extend one’s not writing. "
Isn't this the truth?!?! hahaha