Alisa

“Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized--that was the dream of his life.”
― Philip Roth, When She Was Good

“The more stuff you love the happier you will be.”
― Ross Gay, The Book of Delights: Essays

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations