Kelly

“Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown. An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you’re lost now.”
― Walter Kirn, Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade

“Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool. Tranquil rivers often begin as roaring waterfalls, but no river leaps and foams all the way to the sea. Tranquility, however, is often a sign of great, if hidden, power. Intensity and depth of feeling and thought preclude wild outbursts of passion; in sorrow and joy the soul takes careful stock of every situation, and sees that so it must be.”
― Lermontov, Mikhail, Герой нашего времени