#path

Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name. ↗

— Curtis Sittenfeld

#empathy #ethics #politics #food

This was truly to be a radical milestone: the world’s first-ever marathon nude psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott’s raw, naked, LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven day stretches. The psychopaths spent every waking moment journeying to their darkest corners in an attempt to get better. There were no distractions—no television, no clothes, no clocks, no calendars, only a perpetual discussion (at least one hundred hours every week) of their feelings. When they got hungry, they sucked food through straws that protruded through the walls. As during Paul Bindrim’s own nude psychotherapy sessions, the patients were encouraged to go to their rawest emotional places by screaming and clawing at the walls and confessing fantasies of forbidden sexual longing for one another... ↗

— Jon Ronson

#experimental #lsd #nudity #psychopath #psychotherapy

My mother was a strong-willed and opinionated woman - a Sicilian! - and if she didn't like something, she'd let you know about it. So her undying support of her kids went a long way in proving to us that we were on the right path. ↗

— Marlo Thomas

#her #kids #know #like #long

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia. ↗

— Hideki Tojo

#asia #both #china #each #east

With options thus foreclosed, in order to protect and defend the nation and clear the obstacles that stood in its path, a decisive appeal to arms was made. ↗

— Hideki Tojo

#arms #clear #decisive #defend #made

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#aroused #carrying #definite #enthusiasm #first

When I recall my own path of life I cannot but speak of the violence, hatred and lies. A lesson drawn from such experiences, however, was that we can effectively oppose violence only if we ourselves do not resort to it. ↗

— Lech Walesa

#drawn #effectively #experiences #hatred #however

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness. ↗

— Ivan Turgenev

#desire #expect #genuine #holiness #nothing

I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on. ↗

— Matthew Vaughn

#going #i #i can #member #minority

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force. ↗

— Lech Walesa

#belong #brutal #centuries #crossed #experienced