synthetic philosophy

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might’ve been.’”

The pain of discipline weighs ounces whereas the pain of regret weighs tons.

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.

I am hopelessly in love with a memory. An echo from another time, another place.

“Cheating death may feel reasonable but cheating your circumstances is what cracks the code of epiphany”

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

“Living for other people and things can be a form of precautionary discipline for maintaining the toughest selfishness.”

The worst thing about depression is how, before you know it, you have lost years of your life. But there’s no way you’re going to get them back. It’s lost time that will be gone forever, and I hate it so much.

I’m done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.

You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him–the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints–is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money’s sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual–but it was the same road… You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today.

But most good writers are Don Quixote at heart, and unreasonableness is often a condition of art.

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.

Something is very wrong and all men are mild lunatics engaged in pursuits that seem to them very important while an absurdly logical force keeps them at their futile jobs.

Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.

The key to awakening is to get all of your attention and energy into right here and right now.

“Things are as they are because they were as they were.”