Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
Henry MillerRead
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Interpretation
Our daily actions shape our destiny and personal struggles are often consequences of our own choices.
This quote by Henry Miller emphasizes the idea that we have agency in our lives and that our actions and behaviors are fundamental in determining the outcomes we experience. It suggests that many of the challenges and difficulties we face can be traced back to decisions we have made, urging us to take responsibility for our fate and to reflect on how our daily choices influence our overall well-being.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development one might say, 'Remember, we create our fate every day.'
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?
We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that we will all be better off if every one of us does what is in his or her own interest is incorrect. This is shown by what are known as "prisoner's dilemma" situations, which are playing an increasingly important role in discussions of ethical theory... At least on the collective level, therefore, egoism is self-defeating - a conclusion well brought out by Parfit in his aforementioned Reasons and Persons.
There is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a false one.
The human mind delights in finding patternβso much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.
At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.