“It is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“All escapes are essentially similar; and if we recognize that the mind is constantly escaping from the central problem of anguish, of emptiness, then we are capable of looking at emptiness without condemning it or being afraid of it.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom

“The heart is the key to the world and to life. One lives in this helpless condition in order to love — and to be beholden to others. Through imperfection one becomes open to the influence of others — and this influence of others is the purpose.” — Novalis, Teplitz Fragments

“When you see the actual root of the problem, the solution will be obvious to you. This doesn't mean it will be easy, but you will know what you must do and feel motivated to do it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/findin...

“Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.” — Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle”

“In man there is a deep so profound it is hidden even to him in whom it is.” — Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms

“The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.” — Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“To find the root of the problem, you must first overcome the deficit in your awareness. You must allow your investigation of the problem to become broader and deeper than before.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/finding-th...

“Most philosophers — or, at any rate, very many — profess to be able to prove, by a priori metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on…. (1/2)

“There is so much poetry and yet there is nothing more rare than a poem!” — Friedrich Schlegel, Critical Fragments

“Fragment: beyond fracturing, or bursting, the patience of pure impatience, the little by little suddenly.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

“If it isn’t ceasing to live that you’re afraid of but never beginning to live properly … then you’ll be worthy of the world that made you.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (12.1)

“From this it is easy to see how compassion can be ignored and suffering allowed to expand. It happens because I allow myself to be distracted by the intentions to which I am attached.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/resist...

“The fact that we can never escape viewing the world from somewhere is not a regrettable limitation, since there is nothing that the world is like from nowhere. (1/2)

“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Philosophy has never been anything but a disavowal of the reality principle. … Today this unreality has entered into things. This then is the end of philosophy and the beginning of something else in which reality merges with its ironic refraction.” — Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Why am I an artist and not a philosopher? Because I think according to words and not according to ideas.” — Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951

“When you read something you wrote years ago, there is the potential for insight. For you are no longer the same person who wrote those words. The self that was no longer exists, and the self that is has had new experiences in the meantime.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/writin...

“Nothing is more dangerous for man’s private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade. (1/2)

“Perfection and imperfection are names which do not differ much from the names beauty and ugliness.” — Baruch Spinoza, “Letter to Hugo Boxel” (1674)

“You cannot know the truth, and what truth you know, you cannot prove to others, thus although Fate is defeated, you cannot prove that you have defeated it; this knowledge (of this victory) cannot be communicated.” — Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

“No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“We are told that it is by satisfying our freely-chosen desires that we will become more happy. Consequently, we allow the needs of the many to go unmet, while permitting the desires of the most privileged, lucky, and able to be fulfilled.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/our-best-i...

“But why is it so essential to be able to make war? No one knows, any more than the Trojans knew why it was necessary for them to keep Helen. That is why the good intentions of peace-loving statesmen are so ineffectual. (1/2)

“Nothing must reduce our self-satisfaction as much as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approved at another.” — François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

“Lying still and thinking little is the cheapest medicine for all sicknesses of the soul and, if persisted with, grows more pleasant hour by hour.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims

“You had constructed so many walls, so many layers of defences, that your true self never made it to the surface. Your sadness and your worries were buried so deeply that they were visible to no one, perhaps not even yourself.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-fu...

“Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling: and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.” — Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” — Oscar Wilde, attr. in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman ed.

“The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don’t ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. ... In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire.” — Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion

“The distinction, which we often make between a power and the exercise of it, is without foundation.” — David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

“It may be the case that when we encounter contradiction in our experience of life we are not discovering something false, but the exact opposite — a truth so profound that it defies ordinary understanding.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/logica...

“Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute.” — Michel de Montaigne, Essais

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” — Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“Reading a screenful of information is quite a different thing from looking. It is a digital form of exploration in which the eye moves along an endless broken line. (1/2)

“One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.” — Socrates, in Plato’s Crito

“Compassion is always concerned with need and need alone. To act from compassion is to do whatever is necessary to meet need in the present moment. As our awareness of need grows, our compassion also grows.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/our-be...

“The word “useful” ... can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“To contemplate an object completely means to make it the center of my activity.” — Novalis, General Draft

“Consider it an honor to be criticized, especially by those who speak ill of good people. You should be pained when your things please everyone; it is a sign that they are not good, for perfection belongs to only a few.” — Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

“In the course of time one grows weary of the perpetual patter about the universal, always universal, repeated to the most tedious extreme of insipidity. There are exceptions. If one cannot explain them, neither can one explain the universal.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition

“The greatest fruit of self-reliance is freedom.” — Epicurus, Vatican Sayings

“A philosophy has a practical power: it contributes to the changing of the world. […] It was the philosophical position of the modern notion of thinking subject that led Western culture to think and to behave in terms of subjectivity.” — Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

“We do things with language, produce effects with language, and we do things to language, but language is also the thing that we do. (1/2)

“The true value of your art always remains open and undetermined. You have the ability and the courage to continue asserting the value you see in it, even in the face of general indifference.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-va...

“Rationality is shown not so much in what you believe as in how you believe it. You are rational if you believe it on evidence and as firmly as the evidence warrants and if, further, your belief leads you to act only in ways which are no obstacle to the discovery of error.” — Bertrand Russell

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” — John Dewey, How We Think

“I’m aware that I can’t say everything I know, I only know when painting or pronouncing, syllables blind of meaning. And if here I must use words, they must bear an almost merely bodily meaning.” — Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“What does the person who wishes Awakening upon living beings not wish for them? How can one who is angry at the good fortune of others possess the Awakening Mind?” — Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra, Crosby & Skilton tr. (6:83)

“Often the feeling of anxiety is so powerful that it overwhelms any other feelings. But sometimes it is more subtle and experienced only as a kind of tension or numbness. When anxiety is present, it can cause me to take actions that are not only unnecessary but also harmful.” Read more: