We work hard and play hard not because we are more industrious or more playful than our ancestors but because we dare not stop lest in the stillness we are overwhelmed by the sound of our own anxieties and fears.
“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― Giovanni’s Room
― Giovanni’s Room
“Lord, help me forgive those who sin differently than I.” When”
― Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
― Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“Why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for example, or a fine evening or conversation with people we like, why does it all seem to be a hint of some limitless happiness existing somewhere else rather than a real happiness, the kind, that is, we possess ourselves?”
― Fathers and Sons
― Fathers and Sons
“I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack -- but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
Chirayu’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Chirayu’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Polls voted on by Chirayu
Lists liked by Chirayu
























