underscored

@underscored

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The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness.

Iris Murdoch
22h ago

The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

3d ago

The great majority of us are not in a position in life to choose our work in the sense of selecting a particular job. We find ourselves in a particular situation, born into a particular family, in a particular town, with particular talents and disabilities. And our duty is to make the best of it.

3d ago

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence of such a world is an affront.

6d ago

The more you own, the more it owns you. We are dying from civilisation and its discontents, and only the most radical knowledge of how to live simply can save us.

1w ago

The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies. After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.

1w ago

A man may take to drink on account of trouble, but he would be none the better for the drinking; whereas, if he takes to reading, he will become wise.

2w ago

Hope and trust must not be confused. They are different things, as the expectation of fortune here on earth is different from the second theological virtue. He who blindly, obstinately repeats "let us hope" does not trust; he is really only hoping for a lucky break in the momentarily propitious game governed by the law of necessity. Those who trust, on the other hand, do not count on particular events, for they are sure there is an economy that encompasses all events and surpasses their meaning the way a tapestry, a symbolic carpet, surpasses the flowers and animals that compose it.

2w ago

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. The apparent leisureliness of natural processes conceals an efficiency that frantic human activity can never match.

3w ago

The more you own, the more it owns you.

4w ago

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

4w ago

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self; the only escape is through love and beauty and truth.

4w ago

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by drowning in all those thoughts. We think too much and feel too little. We have lost our minds and forgotten our hearts.

1mo ago

To be entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. The first principle for the relations between States should be loyalty to natural obligations of human beings, not to the state, whenever these conflict. A man who truly believes in an ordered society must believe in the equality of human rights.

1mo ago

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by drowning in our own thoughts.

1mo ago

We are not the measure of all things. There is much in the world that is indifferent to human purposes, and this indifference is a kind of freedom—for us and for reality itself.

1mo ago

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self; the only escape is through the bars of understanding something larger than ourselves.

1mo ago

The mind is in its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

1mo ago

A man may take to drink on account of trouble, but he ought to take to work on account of it. Work is the cure, not the cause of the trouble.

1mo ago

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence of such a world is a form of rebellion.

1mo ago

As a sculpture is shaped by what is chiseled off from the block of stone, so too are we shaped by what we lose — by choice, with all the complexities and difficulties of letting go, or by the scythe of chance, which takes away as impartially as it gives.

1mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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