Be strict with yourself and tolerant of others. Your standards are for you.
Tag: Epigraph
“We don’t know enough about ourselves. I think it’s better to know that you don’t know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that’s why so many people are so lost.”
– James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk
“We don’t know enough about ourselves. I think it’s better to know that you don’t know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that’s why so many people are so lost.”
– James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” – Mark Twain
Read it and weep.
“Formerly the fewest men wrote books that were most valuable. Now anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people’s minds.
It has been stated that, as men progress, they shall be able to travel in airships and reach any part of the world in a few hours. Men will not need the use of their hands and feet. They will press a button and have their clothing by their side. They will press another button and have their newspaper. A third, and a motorcar will be waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately dished-up food. Everything will be done by machinery.
They are obliged to work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occupations, for the sake of millionaires. Formerly men were made slaves under physical compulsion; now they are enslaved by the temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy. There are now diseases of which people never dreamed before, and an army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of civilization.
Formerly special messengers were required and much expense was incurred in order to send letters; today anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter for one penny. True, at the same cost, one can send one’s thanks also. Formerly people had two or three meals consisting of homemade bread and vegetables; now they require something to eat every two hours, so that they have hardly leisure for anything else.
These are all true tests of civilization. And if anyone speaks to the contrary, know that he is ignorant. This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. Others put on the cloak of religion and prate about morality.
But after twenty years’ experience, I have come to the conclusion that immorality is often taught in the name of morality. Even a child can understand that in all I have described above there can be no inducement to morality. Civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails miserably even in doing so.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Civilization 1909
“Lastly, if there’s anything I can convince you of: you should build a personal site, you should obsess over it, you should meticulously document it, and you should have quite a bit of fun doing so. (It’s worth it.)”
– Justin Duke
“My camera is a Time Machine. A camera can be able to stop the world, in that we stop the world and then investigate what is there, carefully.”
-Hiroshi Sugimoto
“Everything we’re forced to learn at school we quickly forget, but the things we set out to learn ourselves — to quench a thirst — are never forgotten, and inevitably become an important part of our existence.”
—Werner Herzog
“Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.”
— Bertolt Brecht
“Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.”
– Cesare Pavese
[I]n order to write a book, do a deed, paint a picture with some life in it, one has to be alive oneself. And so, unless you never want to progress, study is a matter of very secondary importance for you. Enjoy yourself as much as you can, have as many diversions as you can, and remember that what people demand in art nowadays is something very much alive, with strong colour and great intensity. So intensify your own health and strength and life a little; that is the best study.
Vincent Van Gogh
“We’re all so frightened by time, the way it moves on and the way things disappear. That’s why we’re photographers. We’re preservationists by nature. We take pictures to stop time, to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible.
People are taking more pictures now than ever before, billions of them, but there are no slides, no prints. Just data. Electronic dust. Years from now when they dig us up there won’t be any pictures to find, no record of who we were or how we lived.”
Ben Ryder, Kodachrome
“Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, and art that excites the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.” — Nadar (1910)
“I’m sorry, I may never find a place this nice again, but I need to go out into the world and have my adventure.” – Big Fish
““Journaling is an offshoot of meditation—a type of introspection where a record of events is welcome. It doesn’t have to mean the record is permanent. In fact, it’s probably better as ephemeral—permanently locked behind a password. But, the fact that it exists is a comfort in itself.” – CJ Chilvers