metaphysiquote - Tumblr blog

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“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

— James Baldwin, from “They Can’t Turn Back”

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Stephen Dunn, The Insistence of Beauty: Poems

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April 23, 1929 Journals of Anais Nin 1927-1931  [volume 4]

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rainer maria rilke, letters to a young poet

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Chelsea Dingman, from "Of Those Who Can’t Afford to Be Gentle"

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Carl Phillips, from “Civilization”, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020

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"I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again."

//Arthur Miller, The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts

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“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

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“There is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men.”

— Gore Vidal, Creation

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practice forgiving yourself as often as possible. it does wonders once you really learn to move past things you dislike about your past actions that cannot be redone.

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Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away⸺you know?⸺from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood.

James Baldwin  This morning, this evening, so soon  

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Around Jerusalem thousands of acres of pine forests were planted by the Jewish National Fund, forests which are both intended to camouflage destroyed Palestinian villages and fashion a new pastoral 'biblical landscape', create a new collective memory and give the impression of an 'authentic' timeless biblical landscape in which trees have been standing forever. But this 'natural landscape' is a carefully constructed scene to camouflage the systematically expropriated land of Palestinian villages, the destruction of olive groves and the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba.

Nur Masalha, Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (p. 376)

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“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.”

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

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“It is the very concept of the nation that needs to be suppressed — or rather, the manner in which the word is used. For the word national and the expressions of which it forms part are empty of all meaning; their only content is millions of corpses, and orphans, and disabled men, and tears and despair.”

— Simone Weil, “The Power of Words”

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“And it is no use to try to take a shortcut and want to start, already knowing that the voice says little, starting straightaway with being depersonal. For the journey exists, and the journey is not simply a manner of going. We ourselves are the journey. In the matter of living, one can never arrive beforehand. The via crucis is not a detour, it is the only way, one cannot arrive except along it and with it. Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. One only reaches it having experienced the power of building, and, despite the taste of power, preferring to give up. Giving up must be a choice. Giving up is the most sacred choice of a life. Giving up is the true human instant. And this alone, is the very glory of my condition. Giving up is a revelation.”

— Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G. H.

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“One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers – you can find it in the choreographer Martha Graham’s biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: ‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’”

— Zadie Smith (via campaignagainstcliche)

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“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning