quotes-for-the-soul

[quotes-for-the-soul]

I find it especially vital to remember that political dogmas become dogmas expressly because they are repeated with fervor. When a politician or pundit starts to sound more like a commercial jingle or broken record than a scholar, that's a cue to listen more closely--to bear in mind that knowledge isn't always meant to go down like a nursery rhyme.

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

[quotes-for-the-soul]

We cannot perceive self-doubt as a weakness, and we shouldn't demand undying certainty even from experts, or they will surely bullshit us in order to meet that expectation. WASPs in turtlenecks will overpromise eager investors. They'll press launch before the rocket is ready.

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

[quotes-for-the-soul]

"The universe has your back" sounds like a positive affirmation. But to me, it's still a conspiracy theory, because it plays into the narrative that the universe cares--that it could be out to get you if it wanted to. Nature does not "care" like that. if it has intentions, they're not the human kind.

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

[quotes-for-the-soul]

In the end, rage, no matter how profoundly justified, destroys the enraged. Just as we are created anew by what we love, so we are reduced and remade by what we hate.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

[quotes-for-the-soul]

Wasting one's time on little things is not the hallmark of greatness.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

[quotes-for-the-soul]

Love is spring after winter. It comes to heal life's wounds inflicted by the unloving cold.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

[quotes-for-the-soul]

At the moment of dying, we are all penniless.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

[quotes-for-the-soul]

She closed her eyes and felt the ease of shutting out the world, however temporary. Sleep, the only space that did not refuse her, took over her body. Just an hour, she told herself, just two hours, just three hours, just a day, just two days, just a month, just nine months, just the rest of her life. That’s all she would sleep for, the rest of her life.

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

[quotes-for-the-soul]

I was not too fond of crab, ever since I saw my birthday crab boiled alive, but I knew I could not refuse. That's the way Chinese mothers show they love their children, not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of steamed dumplings, duck gizzards, and crab.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

[quotes-for-the-soul]

A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use. That is the power of chess. It is a game of secrets in which one most show and never tell.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

[quotes-for-the-soul]

The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction from which the sun rises, where the wind comes from.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

[quotes-for-the-soul]

It's too hard to hate a belief without hating the believer.

Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright

[quotes-for-the-soul]

"History is one long struggle for sanity." "Especially in Texas," said Ezer.

Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright

[quotes-for-the-soul]

When you're young the world is spilling over with possibilities, and you're out there shopping for your future, maybe this, maybe that, trying on destinies to see which one fits. So you choose or you just let life happen; either way you might become aware some night when you should be prancing through dreamland that there's a hole in the place where there should be the fully realized you. You missed a turn back there. Night after night the hollowness expands as you watch the possible destinies take their leave. Nobody's coming to your rescue. And then the truth rolls in like a giant wave that drowns your spirit and you realize that you're nothing more than what the stars see, that pitiable speck in the universe.

Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright

[quotes-for-the-soul]

Once again, the stars mocked him. Out here you were fully aware of the speckness of your existence in the universe, the majesty of eternal creation compared with the swift and insignificant transit of one such as yourself. Nothing in your life made any difference in the countenance of the heavens bearing down on you, no more than the mountains and the cows and the rattlesnakes.

Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright

[quotes-for-the-soul]

I didn't intentionally gravitate towards stories of women. I was interested in human rights, which often boiled down to this question: who was winning and who was losing? And over and over again, country after country, story after story, it was the men who were winning and the women who were losing. Not always, not everywhere, but most often, and by a wide, wide margin.

Women we Buried, Women we Burned: A Memoir by Rachel Louise Snyder

[quotes-for-the-soul]

But when I look back over my life to date, I can think of occasions when I regret not having stood up to someone or something. I can think of none I regret that went the other way, not a single time I was sorry to have found my voice and used it.

It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly