Roxana Micu

“All great things are slow of growth; this is true even of a grape or of a fig.
If then you say to me now, I desire a fig, I shall answer, It needs time: wait till it first
flower, then cast its blossom, then ripen. Whereas then the fruit of the fig-tree reaches
not maturity suddenly nor yet in a single hour, do you nevertheless desire so quickly,
and easily to reap the fruit of the mind of man?—Nay, expect it not, even though I bade
you!”
― The-Golden-Sayings-Epictetus

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

“Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow over the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, there, far away, at the edge of the sky, burns with a crimson flame; every little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy; every little blade of grass grows and is happy! And everything has its path, and everything knows its path, goes with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither people nor sounds, a stranger to everything and a castaway.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“much of the developing world—no longer suffers from diseases of deficiency. Instead we get the diseases of excess. This”
― Scott Carney, What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength