Brian Cham

“Carl Joseph kept silent. It was as if there were no answer to Dr. Demant’s question in the whole big wide world. One could have wasted years searching for an answer, as if human speech were exhausted and dried up for all eternity.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“When you are in a peak, your ego makes you see things as better than they really are.

And in a valley, it makes you see things worse than they really are.

It makes you think a peak will last forever; and it makes you fear a valley will never end.

The most common reason you leave a peak too soon is arrogance, masquerading as confidence.

The most common reason you stay in a valley too long is fear. Masquerading as comfort.”
― Spencer Johnson, Peaks and Valleys: Making Good And Bad Times Work For You--At Work And In Life

“There’s nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Over there, across the dark waters, on that far shore, there’s only beauty. Dogs can see it, you know. We can peer through the thin places between worlds —even through the veil between this life and the next. And over there you and I are already together, and always have been, and always will be. Part of you remembers. Part of everyone does. Hence those myths we’ve discussed so often—Eden, for instance.”
― David Bentley Hart, Roland in Moonlight

“We can find awe, then, in eight wonders of life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, life and death, and epiphany.”
― Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life