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"The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest)."
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"War is only one facet of the larger problem of evil which has been with the human race since the beginning . . .This same evil tried to destroy the greatest human being who ever lived, nailing Him to a cross."

"Heaven is a wonderful place and the benefits for the believer are out of this world!"

"God does not want an apartment in our house. He claims our entire home from attic to cellar."

"Thought, if I may put it, is the man behind the possession, appearance, things we like, things we hate and the very epitome of life."

"We should not covet or expect the praise of ungodly men . . . the very fact that they are inclined to persecute us is proof that we are “not of the world."

"A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question."

"Heavenly rest will be so refreshing that we will never feel that exhaustion of mind and body we so frequently experience now. I'm really looking forward to that."

"It is what it is because you let it be so."

"I am the creation of love.I am the source of love.I am the beginning of love.I like to vanish in love."

"I believe there is an obedience to the Gospel, there is a self-denial and a bearing of the cross, if you are to be a follower of Christ. Being a Christian is a serious business."
Explore more quotes by Rebecca Solnit


"Part of what makes roads, trails and paths so unique as built structures is that they cannot be perceived as a whole all at once by a sedentary onlooker. They unfold in time as one travels along them, just as a story does as one listens or reads, and a hairpin turn is like a plot twist, a steep ascent a building of suspense to the view at the summit, a fork in the road an introduction of a new storyline, arrival the end of the story. Just as writing allows one to read the words of someone who is absent, so roads make it possible to trace the route of the absent. Roads are a record of those who have gone before and to follow them is to follow people who are no longer there."


"The revolution that counts is the one that takes place in the imagination; many kinds of change issue forth thereafter, some gradual and subtle, some dramatic and conflict-ridden--which is to say that revolution doesn't necessarily look like revolution."


"I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?"


"Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of."


"Silence is what allows people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies to grow and flourish, crimes to go unpunished."


"But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already a loss."


"This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell."


"The term 'politics of prefiguration' has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it's a temporary and local place..."


"Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist."
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