No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Confucius

“A fight is going on inside me,” said an old man to his son. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you.”

The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Which wolf will win?”

The old man replied simply, “The one you feed.”

JEREMY FINK AND THE MEANING OF LIFE, WENDY MASS

I don’t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn’t revealed it’s beauty to them.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, BORIS PASTERNAK

"Do you know -- I hardly remembered you?"

"Hardly remembered me?"

"I mean: how shall I explain? I -- it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again."

--Edith Wharton, 'The Age of Innocence'

She made no answer and he went on: "What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse at a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. it's beyond all human enduring - that's all".

"Oh, don't say that; when I'm enduring it!", she burst out, her eyes filling.

--Edith Wharton, 'The Age of Innocence'

"The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him."

--Margaret Mitchell, 'Gone with the Wind'

"All right- now along come the liberals... and they say, 'minorities are just people, like us'. Sure, minorities are people; people, not angels. Sure, they're like us - but not exactly like us; that's the all-too-familiar state of liberal hysteria, in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede [...]

So lets face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us, and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it's better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear out feelings over with pseudo-liberal sentimentality [...]

But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can't you see what nonsense that is? What's to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse?"

--Christopher Isherwood, 'A Single Man'

(There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning.)

--Christopher Isherwood, 'A Single Man'

"Someone has to ask you a question," George continues, meaningly, "before you can answer it. But it's seldom you find anyone who'll ask the right questions. Most people aren't that much interested -"

Christopher Isherwood, 'A Single Man'

"We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live".

--Joseph Joubert

Doubt thou the stars are fire

Doubt that the sun doth move

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt I love

--William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet'

"'We had fine notions then, didn't we?' And then, with a rush, 'Oh Ashley, nothing has turned out as we expected!'

'It never does', he said. 'Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is'.

--Margaret Mitchell, 'Gone with the Wind'

"That's what empathy does- it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are forced beyond our limited vision.
Noone is exempt from the call to find common ground.
Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn't enough. After all, talk is cheap; empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organiser back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighbourhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy and money. Those are the true tests of what we value, I'd tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realise them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all".

--Barack Obama, 'The Audacity of Hope'

"Just think about what a real education for these children would involve. It would start by giving a child an understanding of himself, his world, his culture, his community. That's the starting point of any educational process. That's what makes a child hungry to learn - the promise of being part of something, of mastering his environment. But for the black child, everything's turned upside down. From day one, what's he learning about? Someone else's history. Someone else's culture. Not only that, this culture he's supposed to learn is the same culture that's systematically rejected him, denied his humanity".

--Barack Obama, 'Dreams from my Father'