carlyn > carlyn's Quotes

“You want to know my name? --a hill, a tree. An empty drifting boat.”
― Hsu Hsuan

“You can't understand a city without using its public transportation system.”
― Erol Ozan

“What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!”
― David Sedaris , Me Talk Pretty One Day

“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
― Albert Camus

“There has never been nationhood without falsehood.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto

“Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices

“I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives. And I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing. It's about learning to live with the missing parts.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“How I go to the wood

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“Marital property was held jointly, marital residence was more often with the bride’s than the groom’s parents, descent and inheritance was bilateral, and women’s claim on property was sufficiently secure to allow them to be the initiators of divorce as often as men. Attractive as this pattern seems in modern terms, it could be argued that the absence of male primogeniture, which cruelly concentrated wealth in particular dynastic lines in Early Modern Europe and China, was one of the reasons that Southeast Asians did not accumulate capital as those centers did.”
― Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads

“When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”
― bell hooks, Teaching Community