#philosophical

If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly. ↗

— Jeffrey Archer

#philosophical #humor

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#meaning-of-life #philosophical-musings #searching #thinking #intelligence

Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#life

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision? ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#life

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps. There are always more. ↗

— David Mitchell

#inspirational #philosophical #thoughtful #inspirational

Yesterday I thought about why I felt the need to get up at exactly the same time as the day before and do everything I did the day before. Why? What compels any of us to do the things we do when deep down a part of us just wants to break free from it all? ↗

— J.A. Redmerski

#philosophical #life

A sin is nothing more than regret. Not for doing it once, but doing it again when you know you’re going to regret it. ↗

— Carroll Bryant

#human-nature #opinion #perception #philisophical-life #philosophical

By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life. ↗

— Georg Simmel

#sociology #life

There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#humility #kitchen #kitchen-table #parliament #philosophical

That vice has often proved an emancipator of the mind, is one of the most humiliating, but, at the same time, one of the most unquestionable facts in history. ↗

— W.E.H. Lecky

#politics #wisdom #life