Thread: Authors who have changed you, with their words Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by moron (# 206) on :
 
Thoreau. (David Henry, for you pedants. )

I could have sorted numerous quotes but whoever did this did pretty well.

Although I will go with:

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
 

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Posted by Drifting Star (# 12799) on :
 
I'm absolutely with you on Thoreau, and would be very hard pressed to choose just one.

The first quote that springs to mind, though, is one that I found when I was a teenager. It was in the fruit bowl, scribbled in my mum's handwriting on a bit of paper torn from a newspaper. I have never been able to find out who said or wrote it, although I would hazard a guess that it was heard on Radio 4.

"They are free who are not afraid to go to the end of their thoughts."
 

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Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :
 
A lot of stuff by the late Andrew M. Greeley... none of which I can remember right now... sorry! Teeth are killing me--but when the meds kick in, I'll be back with quotes!
 

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Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :
 
Thomas Merton 'The Sign of Jonas,' which was his first published journal. Tracks his life from just after he entered the Trappist monastery through his ordinations to diaconate and priesthood, and is the book primarily responsible for forming my personal spirituality (if I have any).
It's not possible to quote any of it, really, but it's a splendid read.
It was pretty heavily redacted by the Trappist censors, and was later published (with much less editing) in his complete journals.
 

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Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
Ursula K. LeGuin. Two by:

quote:

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The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

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quote:

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The creative adult is the child who has survived.

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quote:

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Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth an light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

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quote:

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The Authentic Life is the life in which, whatever we do, we are willing to take full responsibility for it.

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