Josh Robison

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.” ”
― Chögyam Trungpa

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of their nature sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One "settles down" into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man "falls" into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“I am reminded of the apocryphal conversation between Confucius and Lao Tzu when the former had been prating of universal love without the element of self: 'What stuff!' cried Lao Tzu, 'Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self? Sir, if you would cause the world not to lose its source of nourishment— There is the universe: its regularity is unceasing. There are the Sun and Moon: their brightness is unceasing. There are the stars: their groupings never change. There are the birds and the beasts: they flock together without varying. There are trees and shrubs: they grow upwards without exception. Like these, accord with the Dao— with the way of all things— and be perfect. Why then these vain struggles after charity and duty to one's neighbor as though beating a drum in search of a fugitive? Alas, Sir you have brought much confusion into the mind of man.”
― Alan W. Watts, Become What You Are