berbelle

[berbelle]

To be in love when the outcome is uncertain is an exquisite kind of agony.

[berbelle]

Het vermogen om de donkere kant van het leven te erkennen zonder de levenslust te verliezen.

[berbelle]

Is geluk een aangeleerd iets of overkomt het ons zomaar? Wanneer richtte voor het eerst een oermens de blik op, zag de dieren des velds en dacht: ik ben gelukkig, in plaats van: waar is mijn speer?

[berbelle]

Ik smelt weg van spijt en heimwee naar die tijd.

[berbelle]

A life of silent contemplation didn’t frighten her, no, not any more. What petrified her was the endless twittering chatter you heard everywhere you went.

[berbelle]

Does civilisation progress? Elizabeth Finch liked to ask us that question. Undoubtedly it does in terms of medicine, science, technology. But in human, moral terms? In terms of philosophy? In terms of seriousness?

[berbelle]

Imagine the intellectual victory of what most Hellenists believed - that if there was any joy to be had in life, it was in this brief sublunary passage of ours, not in some absurd Disneyfied heaven after we are dead.

[berbelle]

'Nothing could be good enough for you,' I say. 'What does that mean?' she asks with another laugh. 'I mean that you deserve so much more than a courthouse or even a cathedral. You deserve the world. Nothing less than mountaintop vows for you, Theodora Poulos.'

Our Ride to Forever - Julie Olivia

[berbelle]

Het vlugge wit van watervallen op de zwarte rots, de kleuren van de korstmos, de geur van groen inademen en voelen hoe groot en vol ineens je borst is, dat zochten we. Hoe konden we het vergeten.

[berbelle]

Hoe het gaat, vraagt ze nu. Hoe het was.

Ik weet het niet. Een mok die je vanuit alle hoeken van de keuken bijeen hebt geraapt en gelijmd, ga je daar bij het ontbijt gewoon weer thee in doen?

[berbelle]

Ze worstelt met het verwelken.

[berbelle]

At school he lived the mental life of a dog chained to constant present.

[berbelle]

The heart of wisdom is not to care too much.

[berbelle]

[berbelle]

“You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn’t care. I guess that’s what’s scariest: not caring about the loss.”

— Douglas Coupland, Player One

[berbelle]

I like listening to sad music when I’m sad. It doesn’t make me feel happier per se, it just improves the quality of the sadness.

— Elisa Gabbert, from "The Quality of Nothing (After This Nothing Happened)," Normal Distance

[berbelle]

It’s most alive at the heart of the thing where the brush of your fingertips against my wrist could send me begging.

— Maya C. Popa, from "Margravine," Wound Is the Origin of Wonder