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No matter what the universe has in store, it cannot take away from the fact that you were born. You’ll have some joy and some pain, and all the other experiences that make up what it’s like to be a tiny part of a grand cosmos. No matter
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“She tried to put that together with the burbling roar of the crowd, the overlapping music, the lake and the sky; it was too big. She tried to take it in anyway, feeling the world balloon inside her, oceans of clouds in her chest, this town, these people, this friend, the Alps—the future—all too much. She clutched his arm hard. We will keep going, she said to him in her head—to everyone she knew or had ever known, all those people so tangled inside her, living or dead, we will keep going, she reassured them all, but mostly herself, if she could; we will keep going, we will keep going, because there is no such thing as fate. Because we never really come to the end.”
― The Ministry for the Future
― The Ministry for the Future
“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Cloud Cuckoo Land
― Cloud Cuckoo Land
“And in my dream, if the fathers and mothers loved their sons and daughters and sang to them in their cradles, they made a good country, and if they didn’t, they made a tyranny, so whether existence is a bloodbath or a bubble bath could hinge on whether a little child got kissed good night with a story and a glass of water or sent to bed without snuggles or a snack or a cohesive philosophy of justice.”
― The Past Is Red
― The Past Is Red
“The world as it is is enough.”
― Cloud Cuckoo Land
― Cloud Cuckoo Land
“If the best we could do was to minimize injustice and human suffering, so that life was not positively bad, there would be no point in living life at all. If human life is not a mistake, there must be some things that matter not because they solve a problem or address a need that we would rather do without but because they make life positively good. They would have what I've called "existential value." Art, pure science, theoretical philosophy: they have value of this kind. But so do mundane activities like telling funny stories, amatueur painting, swimming or sailing, carpentry or cooking, playing games with family and friends—what the philosopher Zena Hitz has called "the little human things." It's not just that we need them in order to recharge so that we can get back to work, but that they are the point of being alive. A future without art or science or philosophy, or the little human things, would be utterly bleak. Since they will not survive unless we nurture them, that is our responsibility, too.”
― Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way
― Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way
Ryan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ryan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,794 books
|
181 friends
240 books
|
117 friends
1,342 books
|
48 friends
2,321 books
|
153 friends
159 books
|
145 friends
1,126 books
|
35 friends
269 books
|
27 friends
308 books
|
43 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Ryan
Lists liked by Ryan
