Quotes About Insight

To read, to seek, to know.

40 pieces of helpful advice: No. 31 - Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.

Friend: Someone who will tell you the truth, often mistaken for an enemy.

Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

In a world that can get too much, a world where we are running out of mind space, fictional worlds are essential. They can be an escape from reality, yes, but not an escape from truth.

Lincoln is not the only famous leader to have battled depression. Winston Churchill lived with the 'black dog' for much of his life too. Watching a fire, he once remarked to a young researcher he was employing: 'I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.

Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself. But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest. And books themselves seemed to me to reflect this idea. Which is why the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to 'someone is looking for something'.

it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.

Reading Schopenhauer when you felt melancholy was like taking off your clothes when you felt cold, but a line of his came back to me.

I think intellectualism can be a barrier to reading. The point of a book - song, film, whatever - is to FEEL it. That's why we're here, no?

The cure for loneliness is understanding who we are.

Nora stared at the books around her. 'So, are you saying I only have pawns to play with?' 'I am saying that the thing that looks the most ordinary might end up being the thing that leads you to victory. You have to keep going.

but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality

artist   A human who notices the ridiculousness of being a human and paints, writes, builds, sculpts, films, acts, plays, sings, cries about it.

Der Turm ist meine Lieblingsfigur", sagte sie jetzt. "Man denkt, man müsse nicht auf ihn achten. Weil er sich immer unkompliziert geradeaus bewegt. Dame, Springer und Läufer behält man im Auge, weil sie sich heimlich anschleichen. Aber gerade der Turm wird einem oft zum Verhängnis. Das Umkomplizierte ist nie ganz das, was es zu sein scheint." - S. 104

She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.

The rook is my favorite piece. It's the one that you think you don't have to watch out for. It is straightforward. You keep your eye on the queen and the knights, and the bishop because they are the sneaky ones. But it's the rook that often gets you. The straightforward is never quite what it seems.

Cada libro que se ha escrito es el producto de una mente humana en un estado en particular. Si juntas todos los libros, tienes la suma final de la humanidad. Cada vez que leía un buen libro sentía que estaba leyendo una especie de mapa, un mapa del tesoro, y el tesoro al que me dirigían era en verdad yo mismo.

As Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.' And Ash only saw the Nora he had fallen in love with and married, and so, in a way, that was the Nora she was becoming.

but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. As Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Travel makes one modest," said Gustave Flaubert. "You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." Such perspective can be strangely liberating.

A veces la única manera de aprender es vivir.

Interessant dat het leven soms een heel nieuw perspectief kreeg als je maar lang genoeg wachtte omdat te zien, peinsde ze.

I now realise it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.