"What did you do today? Nothing say our little children, and so do I. What we most are is what we keep mistaking for nothing."

James Richardson Politics See all quotes by James Richardson →

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“First he gathered what he needed. Then he needed to keep gathering what he used to need.”

“Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”

“Happiness, like water, is always available, but so often it seems we’d prefer a different drink.”

“Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?”

“The best way to get people to do what you want is not to be too particular about what you want.”

“It is less important to escape pain than to avoid exceptionless rules.”

Resonant Thoughts

"And then, when being is sufficiently uprooted and waking-being sufficiently strained, there suddenly emerges into the bright light of history a phenomenon that has long been preparing itself undergrou…"

— Oswald Spengler

Mathematics1880–1936

#family

"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by child…"

— Milan Kundera

Literature1929–2023

#family

"The United States not only helped to encircle Germany with a strangle-hold but continued to maintain that starvation blockade for more than seven months after the Armistice, on the ground that if the …"

— Kirby Page

Politics1890–1957

#family

"When he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be h…"

— Hans Christian Andersen

Literature1805–1875

#happiness