Hilary

“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
― David Whyte, Consolations - Revised edition: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and
doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed
had taken bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and
had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace after him than his dog.
Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass
for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. If only you knew.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Black Monk

“Our greatest enemies are ultimately not our political adversaries but entropy, evolution (in the form of pestilence and the flaws in human nature), and most of all ignorance—a shortfall of knowledge of how best to solve our problems.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“Ethics and morals do, in reality, have a place in law—although not in jurisprudence. It is morals that help us make the laws, but morals do not help us apply them.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life