This side of paradise ...

“There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom. ”

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Nevermore ...

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Under A Painted Sky ...

“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”


Hermann Hesse

 

 

A Long Way Down ...

“You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent."

Sebastian Horsley

Plain Truth ...

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche



Time Unveiling Truth by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

The Sense of an Ending ...

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides,
from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which the scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind,
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn.
I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered and I roamed through the wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice directed me:
-Live in the layers, not on the litter-
Though I lack the art to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.
I am not done with my changes.”

Stanley Kunitz


Nude goddess with four arms walking through a field by Mario S Nevado



The cost of living ...

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

Marianne Williamson