Swensen

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Swensen’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (280)
currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (299)
did-not-finish‎ (0)

books-i-hope-my-grandkids-read‎ (18)
books-i-want-to-read-to-my-kids‎ (9)

favorite-books-about-exploration‎ (8)

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Swensen’s Quotes

“No one decides where I go, least of all myself, though each step is where it must be.”
― Tomas Transtromer

tags: decisions, self-determination

7 likes

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius

1166 likes

“I hadn't planned on climbing mountains.
But now that you're in the mountains, be ready to suffer.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

2 likes

“Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in worldwide disorientation and dissociation. Anthropologists”
― C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols

12 likes

“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
― Alan Watts

382 likes

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