Vimala Thakar

Silence in Action - Sensitivity and Pain - To live requires energy and fearlessness, but we are brought up in a pleasure-hunting human race, and pain is something to be afraid of, to be driven away completely, to protect oneself from. But it is the pain and pleasure - the duality - together that make the whole, the wholeness of life. The more sensitive you are and the more you live from the depth of your being, the more vulnerable you are to life. The more sensitive you are and the more capable of loving human beings, the more you will be hurt; there is more sorrow, there is more pain. Psychological hurts, pain and sorrow accompany the sensitivity, intelligence and love. Love and sorrow go together. So, if there is physical or psychological pain, you live with it - not out of despair, not out of self-pity, not out of any weakness. You live with it because it is part of life, it is an expression of life.

Absence | Body | Existence | Illusion | Knowledge | Past | Silence | Thought | Thought |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Display | Misfortune | Misfortune |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

Effort | Hate | Labor | Need | Nothing |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?

Beauty | Blame | Hero | Isolation | Waste | Wife | Will | Beauty |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Up goes the rocket. Its golden grain falls, fertilizing, upon the rich soil of my imagination.

Kill | Love |

Victor Hugo

A head that Raphael would have given to Mary, on a neck that Jean Goujon would have given to Venus.

Children | Good | Little | People |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Stop giving bothersome people false rewards and they will stop bothering you.

Hero |

Victor Hugo

He thought himself stronger than he was and believed he could play mouse with a lion.

Conversation | Enough | Mankind | Rest | Blessed | Friends |

Victor Hugo

The heap of oyster shells they call a library disgusts me to think of. What a lot of paper! What a lot of ink! What a lot of scribbling! Somebody has written all of that! What idiot was it who said that man is a featherless biped?

Luxury |

Victor Hugo

In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.

Man | War | Will |

Victor Hugo

This soul is full of darkness, sin committed there. The culprit is not the one who has committed the sin, but the fact is that the shade.

Authority | Evil | Exaggeration | Good | Man | Respect | Respect |

Victor Hugo

There are fathers who do not love their children, but there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

Love |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

In his hearth and home, in his palace, upon his soft and comfortable bed, day and night, the flower-girls scatter flower petals; but without the Lord's Name, the body is miserable. Horses, elephants, lances, marching bands, armies, standard bearers, royal attendants and ostentatious displays - without the Lord of the Universe, these undertakings are all useless.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Applause | Envy | Eternal | Ideals | Men | Praise | Self | Society | Society |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

All are equal in birth and in death. Differences arise only during the interval. The Emperor and the beggar are both born naked; they sleep equally silently; they bow out without even leaving their new address. Then how can their reality be different? There can be no doubt on this score. All are basically the same.

Achievement | Adventure | Anxiety | Anxiety | Cruelty | Cruelty |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were all there.

Day | Hero | Individual | Intelligence | Man | Mind | Science | Story | Think |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.

Day | Hero | Science | Story |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.

Civilization | Fear |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

The hope is that more dupes skill.

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

The hatred of the weak is not so dangerous that their friendship.