
“A statue isn't built from the ground up -- it's chiseled out of a block of marble -- and I often wonder if we aren't likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I'll be sitting on a train. I'll be lying awake in bed. I'll be watching a movie; I'll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I'll be struck with the paralyzing truth: It's not what we do that makes us who are. It's what we don't do that defines us.”
― Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory
― Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning

“In vain he flees his troubles on a horse — They share the saddle and see him on his course.4”
― Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
― Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning

“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.
Similar to the way we are led along in life by the endless pursuits of pleasures, we are led along, even saved by the endless revelation of pain. This in itself may not be a happy thought, but it is a reminder of how relative, always, are our perceptions of misery and joy.”
―
Similar to the way we are led along in life by the endless pursuits of pleasures, we are led along, even saved by the endless revelation of pain. This in itself may not be a happy thought, but it is a reminder of how relative, always, are our perceptions of misery and joy.”
―

Mrs. Anderson's 2015-16 HAmLit classes ...more
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