Laura

“To oppose something is to maintain it.

They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or unproof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough. ...
For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Indeed, it is worth asking whether this is not a feature that is more often found than not in the greatest books. They do not mainly seek to add to our knowledge: they do not disdain shocking us because what they most want to do is change us.””
― Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism, Religion, and Death: Thirteen Essays