Emily D

“Although Rizal's novels are so familiar that we even have nicknames for them, nobody takes the Noli or Fili to read on holiday except for students cramming for an exam. Studying Rizal should result in an appreciation of his life and works, but all this has turned into a boring chore.”
― Ambeth Ocampo

“He (Proust) tells us, for instance, that there are two methods by which a person can acquire wisdom, painlessly via a teacher or painfully via life, and he proposes that the painful variety is far superior...
"We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.

Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“You might wonder that I who who have served you in the field of diplomacy should set so much store by the power of nationalism. This is because I know from personal experience that in order to become an effective internationalist, one must strive to be a good nationalist. To be a worthy citizen of the world one must first prove himself to be a good Filipino.”
― Carlos P. Romulo, I Walked With Heroes