My priorities were weighed... the competition was taken off the scale.
Quotes that give meaning to me today:
"I learned to never give up your ground… Never run. I learned that sometimes you need to get your fucking ass kicked to get some perspective. I learned to never tempt the fates by verbalizing how great your day or life has been. I realized that you find out how many people truly have your back when the shit hits the fan. I learned what a giant my father was. I learned to never bully people… To never prey on those smaller and weaker… To always defend the underdog... I learned that the best fucking deterrent to those who wish you harm is to cast an imposing shadow and wield a big fucking stick. "
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"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
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"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
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"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
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"Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living."
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* that is all *