No matter how pragmatic you are, you need some fundamental convictions. You need an element of idealism because the tough decisions in foreign policy are all something like 51:49. They’re very close and if you don’t have any conviction…
“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
― Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
― Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
“You want freedom and they give you chicken korma.”
― A Case of Exploding Mangoes
― A Case of Exploding Mangoes
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska
“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.”
― Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.”
― Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Obsessed with True Crime
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