“I actually attack the concept of happiness. I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying 'write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep', and 'cheer up' and 'happiness is our birthright' and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say 'Quick! Move on! Cheer up!' I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word 'happiness' and to replace it with the word 'wholeness'. Ask yourself 'is this contributing to my wholeness?' and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”
Hugh Mackay, psychologist and social researcher
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(psuedonym of Baroness Karen Blixen, Out of Africa)
"and there was this feeling there—this overwhelming feeling of anticipated joy and unfettered possibility—that is still palpable in my consciousness. the feeling of good things—unknown and unmentionable yet vaguely familiar—to come. life, in all its glory, sprawled out in front of me in a moment." - shelley mcconkie
"these fragments i have shored against my ruins."
--T.S. Eliot"for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am now."
-1 Corinthians 13:12
"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever by ugly…if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
--Roald Dahl"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."
--Hemingway"A kind of light spread out from her. and everything changed color. And the world opened out. and a day was good to awaken to. and there were no limits to anything. and the people of the world were good and handsome. and i was not afraid anymore."
--John Steinbeck, East of EdenTo love. to be loved. to never forget your own insignificance. to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. to seek joy in the saddest places. to pursue beauty to its lair to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch To try and understand. to never look away. and never, never to forget."
--Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living"Tell me what's the difference between hope and waiting because my heart doesn't know it constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting
it constantly gets lost in the fog of hope."
--Anna Kamienska"It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you can say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavours, in the air or on the tongue, half colours, too many."
--Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby"If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves."
--Junot Diaz"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea."
--Isak Dinesen(psuedonym of Baroness Karen Blixen, Out of Africa)
"I also painted a study of a seascape, nothing but a bit of sand, sea, sky, grey and lonely- sometimes I feel a need for that silence- where there's nothing but the grey sea- with an occasional seabird. But otherwise, no other voice than the murmer of the waves."
--Vincent van Gogh, from letter to his brother Theo, 17 Sept. 1882“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
-Anne of Green Gables
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