Calls Quotes (page 59)
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Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so called pleasure.
Erich Fromm
But then I have long since grown accustomed to the thought that what we call dreams is semi-reality, the promise of reality, a foreglimpse and a whiff of it; that is they contain, in a very vague, diluted state, more genuine reality than our vaunted waking life which, in its turn, is semi-sleep, an evil drowsiness into which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and sights of the real world, flowing beyond the periphery of the mind—as when you hear during sleep a dreadful insidious tale...
Vladimir Nabokov
Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination…Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.
Wislawa Szymborska
What you don't know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. They called that Idealism in my book I had when I was in college, and after I got hold of that principle I became an Idealist. I was a brass-bound Idealist in those days. If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.
Robert Penn Warren
Did you see him? I know the photo was grainy, but he looks like one of those death metal goth heads, or whatever they’re called. All dressed in black with long hair
I took umbrage at my mother describing my boyfriend this way. John was the Lord of the Underworld. How else was he supposed to dress?
Meg Cabot
Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?
Flann O'Brien
His gaze on mine was completely steady and unblinking, and there was an upward curl at the corners of his mouth . . . he was smiling like he was actually enjoying this.
But I couldn't help feeling as if, behind those blue eyes, there was a different Christopher – the old Christopher – begging me to call him on his asinine behavior. To say, I'm asking for your help now. Will you help us? Will you help me?
Only I didn't.
Because I was too angry with him. Why was he acting like such a...
Meg Cabot
One day—when the emperor had come to call on his uncle the cardinal—our worthy priest happened to be waiting as his Majesty went by. Noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiosity, Napoleon turned around and said brusquely, ‘Who is this good man looking at me?’
‘Sire,’ replied M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a great one. May we both be the better for it.”
That evening the emperor asked the cardinal the priest’s name, Still later, M. Myriel was totally...
Victor Hugo
The way to find out about happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy? not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what is called following your bliss.
Joseph Campbell