This contradiction, and this tension … it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better. Joss Whedon

I’d woken up early and I took a long time getting ready to exist. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (via erraticintrovert)

(Source: delicateswans, via howitzerliterarysociety)

Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. And by doing it, they’re proven right. Because, I think there’s something inside of you—and inside of all of us—when we see something and we think, “I think I can do it, I think I can do it. But I’m afraid to.” Bridging that gap, doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that—THAT is what life is. And I think you might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s special. And if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself. Now you know. A mystery is solved. So, I think you should just give it a try. Just inch yourself out of that back line. Step into life. Courage. Risks. Yes. Go. Now. Amy Poehler (x)

(Source: tinytruant, via lettertomybrother)

Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don’t care what you’ll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself. Albert Camus, from Notebooks, 1951-1959

(Source: violentwavesofemotion)

And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can’t even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you’re almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it’s that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what’s warm - whether it’s something or someone - toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being sad in the world and ready for sleep, that’s happiness. Paul Schmidtberger, Design Flaws of the Human Condition  (via larmoyante)

Love is the white light of emotion. It includes many feelings which, out of laziness and confusion, we crowd into one simple word. Art is the prism that sets them free, then follows the gyrations of one or a few. When art separates this thick tangle of feelings, love bares its bones. But it cannot be measured or mapped. Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is.

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?

A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman

I will never apologize for being me, but I will apologize for the times that I am not. Michael Carini (via ruineshumaines)

(Source: michaelcarini.com, via kelvinsoup)

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? Albert Camus  (via lylaandblu)

(Source: daiseas, via kelvinsoup)

I cannot stand small talk, because I feel like there’s an elephant standing in the room shitting all over everything and nobody is saying anything. I’m just dying to say, “Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?” or “Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?” But you can’t say that at a cocktail party. Paul Gilmartin, The Mental Illness Happy Hour (via conceptnoir)

(Source: ongradschool, via kelvinsoup)

In man, creature and creator are united: in man there is matter, fragment, excess, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine spectator and the seventh day - do you understand this? Friedrich Nietzsche (via kelvinsoup)

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. C.S. Lewis

We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves. C.S. Lewis

There is nothing to say about an unjust death.
Nothing at all.  As we will now show.

From the branch of an olive tree there hung
a tiny chrysalis the color of emerald.
Tomorrow she’d be a pretty butterfly
freed from her cocoon.
The tree was happy to see his chrysalis grown,
but secretly, he wanted her to stay a few more years.
“As long as she remembers me.”

He had shielded her from the wind.
He had saved her from ants.
But tomorrow she would leave
to alone face predators and bad weather.

That night, a fire ravaged the forest
and the chrysalis never became a butterfly.
At dawn, the ashes cold, the tree still stood.
But his heart was charred,
scarred by the flames, scarred by grief.

Ever since, when a bird alights on the olive tree,
the tree tells it about the chrysalis
that never woke up.
He imagines her, wings spread,
flitting across a clear blue sky,
drunk on nectar and freedom,
the discreet witness to our love stories.

 

- Monsieur Lazhar

When you become fully present, thoughts stop and your mind is silent. You are not trying to stop the thoughts. It simply happens as you become present. Thoughts stop as you become present, because thoughts are always about the past or future. You cannot think about the present moment. You would have to take yourself out of the present moment in order to think about it. So if you bring yourself fully present with something that is actually here now, you must emerge out of the mind, and the world of thought. It cannot be otherwise. A noticeable shift will occur within you as you transition from the past and future world of the mind, to the world of now. You cannot stop thoughts. It is impossible. The very effort to stop thoughts is a reinforcement of the thinking process. All you can do is relax, notice that you are in the mind, and then bring yourself present with that which is already present. If you can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, touch it or smell it, in this moment, then it is of the present moment. It is not something you are remembering or imagining with your mind. And so you can be present with it. You are not thinking it into existence. It is actually here now and so your thoughts will stop, and you will experience a deep feeling of peace as your mind falls silent. Leonard Jacobson

(Source: ashramof1, via amourtendre)