Raw Fiction

"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes... but this change is not amelioration... [The civilized man] has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun." - Emerson

"The manner in which one accepts one's fate is undoubtedly more important than what that fate actually is." - Humboldt, Excerpt from Calendar of Wisdom

"Wholeness does not mean perfection: It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness-mine, yours, ours-need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for a new life." - Parker Palmer

"Our attention, our most valuable commodity, is the currency with which we show the world what we are grateful for."

"Evil... is restrained not with violence but with love." - Tolstoy

"A man may make use of any tradition handed down to him from the wise and saintly men of the past, but he himself must use his reason to verify everything that is handed down to him, and to be ready to accept one thing, but reject another." - Tolstoy

"No justification is so fulfilling as to fill a heart that doesn't know how to love."

"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself." - Coco Chanel

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know." -Thoreau

"A saintly person does not possess an inflexible heart. He adapts his heart so that it can respond to other people's hearts. He responds to a virtuous person as if he were a virtuous person, and to a sinner as if he were capable of becoming virtuous." - Eastern Proverb

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever was." - Margaret Mead

"Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target... which others cannot even see." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"I love all beginnings, despite their anxiousness and uncertainty, which belongs to every commencement. If I... wish that something had not happened; if I doubt the worth of an experience and remain in my past-then I choose to begin at this very second." - Maria Rilke

"Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life." - E.B. White

Darkness creeps over the world. Bring light where you can.

"But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate.' - Seneca the Younger

"Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not." - Uncle Iroh

"A country is only... as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become... We made the world we are living in and we have to make it over." - James Baldwin

"What the pupil must learn... is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson" Joseph Tussman

"Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life." - Erich Fromm