“I mention the library only as a last resort. I recommend buying your own books... They can be spiced with underlines, question marks, and exclamation points; they can be thumbed and dog-eared, plucked to their essential core, and annotated so that they become a mirror of yourself.”
― Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
― Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
“A book can be pocketed and discarded, scrawled and torn into pages, lost and bought again. It can be dragged out from a suitcase, opened in front of you when having a snack, revived at the moment of waking, and skimmed through once again before falling asleep. It needs no notice by phone if you can’t attend the appointment fixed in the timetable. It won’t get mad if awakened from its slumber during your sleepless nights. Its message can be swallowed whole or chewed into tiny pieces. Its content lures you for intellectual Why and What adventures and it satisfies your spirit of adventure. You can get bored of it—but it won’t ever get bored of you.”
― Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
― Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Ethics
― Ethics
“The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
Olivia’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Olivia’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Polls voted on by Olivia
Lists liked by Olivia




























