Try an author, a thought, or a phrase in “quotes”.↑ ↓ Navigate · Esc Close

0 words found

Explore all results ↗

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

214 results · Page 7 of 9Play this collection ▷
08c. 1939 AD
Should happiness and success be hidden, in view of the misery and poverty around. Would it be a sign of selfishness and un-intellectual behavior, if we admit to a pursuit of happiness? Could it, on the contrary, not work out as a motivation and an incentive? When giving voice to our happiness, could it not be perceived as a positive challenge? Could happiness not be contagious and become a salutary infectious syndrome? A beneficial infection. ( "Happy days are back again" )
↗
14c. 1939 AD
One day it may feel as if energy and enthusiasm are quenched, feelings dried up and emotions scorched, love and affection tangled in a harsh and uninviting setting. Nothing seems to grow anymore. No seed. No flowers. No foreseeable hope. No conceivable prospects. Any blossom of expectation seems to have become an illusion and life appears to have come to a standstill. If no seed of loving care is sown in the untilled, abandoned land, no bud can come into flower. Singer Amy Winehouse felt like lying fallow in the ground of a wasteland "with tears dry, dying a hundred times, going back to black" and leaving eventually for a place of ultimate sorrow and heartbreak, for a point of no return. ( “Amour en friche” )
↗
16c. 1939 AD
Like a snake sheds its skin, we are capable of getting rid of assembled habits, creating space to call matters into question. Instead of the Shakespearian " To be or not to be " we could favor " to become or not to become". By "becoming", we challenge the range of possibilities in our life and go beyond the merely "being". We can retreat, then, from the imprisonment of a deadly routine, acquire an identity and develop our personality. ( "Man without Qualities" )
↗
21c. 1939 AD
Some seem to be desynchronized in their relationships. They feel oppressed, because they cannot move forward together and at the same pace. Their thinking is often incongruent, their motivation disparate. The phone could be a mediator, as it creates an impression to be a perfect reliable friend. However, in the end, it causes rather a sense of isolation, since it divides more than it unites. Eventually it appears not to be such a good friend but only a ghost friend. ( "Kein Schwein ruft mich an" )
↗