pluto (elif)

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare

“Things are or they are not, Vasya,” he interrupted. “If you want something, it means you do not have it, it means that you do not believe it is there, which means it will never be there. The fire is or it is not. That which you call magic is simply not allowing the world to be other than as you will it.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“Tarihin iradesi Elizabeth'in kişiliğinde ifade bulmuştu, çünkü tarihin iradesi her zaman kabuklarını geride bırakarak ileriye doğru çabalar. Bir ulusun bütün enerjisi Elizabeth'in kişiliğiyle birleşmişti, çünkü kraliçenin arkasındaki ulus tüm dünyanın fatihi olmayı arzuluyordu. Mary Stuart'la birlikte geçmiş, şövalyelere yakışır muhteşemlikte, kahramanlıkla ölmüştü. Böylece iki kadın da kendi seçtikleri alanlarda zafer kazanmış oldular, gerçekçi Elizabeth, tarih sayfalarını; romantik Mary ise, şiir ve efsaneleri fethetti.”
― Stefan Zweig, Marie Stuart

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying