“That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.”
― As I Lay Dying
― As I Lay Dying
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
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“Measurements of people’s minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self—which is absorbed in the moment—your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole.”
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past”
― Ways of Seeing
― Ways of Seeing
“Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.”
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
― Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Eszter’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Eszter’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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