“To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
“It must be obvious, from the start, that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity
― The Wisdom of Insecurity
“But this particular kind of tension against the stream is habitual, and the frustration which it engenders is chronic. If I believe that I would like to break the habit, that very wish is another form of the same tension, and this in turn is a form of the basic un-get-at-ability of It. We are all lunatics trying to stick pins into their own points, and it is thus that our frantic efforts to set the world to rights and to extend our control over all happenings, inner and outer, are themselves the cause of most of our troubles. All force is tension against the stream.”
― Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
― Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus
― The Myth of Sisyphus
“we stopped rushing and found that with less haste, we had more speed, since rushing sets up a whole multitude of antagonistic vibrations.”
― Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
― Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
Bianca’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Bianca’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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