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Essays Quotes

“It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.”

BookStoriesWisdomHumorFunnyPainSufferingQuotesLiteratureUnderstandingGriefEducationConsciousnessFictionKnowledgeNovelLearningToo MuchSadnessAwarenessIgnoranceHumourBooksSorrowDespairPerceptionHeartbreakJokesHumorousCapacityAccountsMiseryEntertainmentAppreciationIgnorantCommandEducatedRealizationNarrativeAccomplishmentHeartacheTortureAuthorWriterEnlightenedSatireStoryWritersUnhappinessCapabilityMasteryNonfictionAcceptableAphorismEntertainingAgonyDistressQuotationsJokeTormentEssaysHilariousEscapeUnbearableDiscomfortAuthorsUnderstandKnowExpertiseScholarshipComprehensionAphorismsSchoolingEscapismApprehensionCognitionKnowledgeableIlliterateDesolationEssaySkillUneducatedTolerableWretchednessManageableWell EducatedScholarlyAphoristAphoristsOverpoweringInsufferableUninformedEruditeUnendurableEruditionProficiencyLearnedNarrativesComprehendAccountEntertainGraspSustainableUnacceptableWell ReadInexperiencedCultivatedCulturedIntolerableWell InformedCognizanceUnschooledUnsophisticatedEndurableInsupportableUnworldlyMan Of LettersUnknowledgeableUnreadUntrainedVia DolorosaAdeptnessAdmissibleBe Acquainted WithBe Conversant WithBe Familiar WithBe Up To Speed OnBe Versed InBenightedBrookableExpertnessHave A Grasp OfHave Knowledge OfHave LearnedHave MasteredHave MemorizedKnowledgableMen Of LettersSufferableSupportableUnenlightenedUnlearnedUnletteredUnmanageableUntaughtUntutoredWoman Of LettersWomen Of Letters
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“A man cannot really be called (sexually) confident if he has never bought his woman a vibrator.”

HumorReligionSexRelationshipsChurchPleasureFamilyMarriageHumourHealthConfidenceSelf LoveSexualityAidsFakeArroganceSatireWeddingArrogantEssaysHivPretenseMasturbationConfidentEssayOrgasmHiv AidsSexy HumorFamily PlanningCunnilingusOrgasmsBlow JobSelf AbuseMasturbateFellatioOnanismVibratorHiv And AidsBjVibratorsDildoDildoes
Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“Some people are so sexually unattractive that the thought of masturbating turns them off.”

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Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“Most if not all sexually active people do not really love having sex; they merely love experiencing an orgasm every now and then.”

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Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“The primary goal of a righteous parent who has a daughter is to minimize the number of boys and men for whom their daughter will have willingly opened her legs come her wedding day; the closer to zero, the more righteous they will seem.”

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Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“Coco Chanel is said to have said that a girl should be two things: who and what she is. I say a girl should do two things: what and who she wants.”

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Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“Some men do not know the father of 'their' children.”

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Book:On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay
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“If I had to take any standardized test today that was important to my future and would be assessed by the scoring processes I have long been a part of, I promise you I would protest, I would fight, I would sue, I would go on a hunger strike or march on Washington ... but I would never allow that massive and ridiculous business to have any say in my future without battling it to the bitter, bitter end. Do what you want, America, but at least you have been warned.”

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Book:Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry
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“Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?”

PhilosophyEssays19th CenturyEssayistPoet PhilosopherRalph Wald Emerson
Book:Essays on Manners, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Nature, Friendship
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“The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about cats." (From a schoolboy's essay, 1903.)”

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Book:Cat Quotations: A Collection of Lovable Cat Pictures and the Best Cat Quotes
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“I remember back when I was in school. When things were more normal. I remember how hard everything was. Every exam, every essay. I remember thinking how it would be easier to die than to write the first word on an empty screen. Every. Single. Time. And my parents always saying you'll be fine, you'll be fine. Stop worrying. You always do well. And I hated that they were right. I hated them for being right. Every. Single. Time. Because just once, I wanted someone to acknowledge how hard it all really was. The crying and the dying and the headaches and the heartaches. To say it out loud so that I could hear it. Just once. And then I'd just get on with it. But I'd know that they knew that it wasn't fine at all and that it probably never would be. But we'd just get on with it. Like we always do.”

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Author:Terry Moore
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“You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“What makes us endure pain so poorly is that we are not accustomed to find our principal contentment in the soul, and that we do not concentrate enough on it; for the soul is the one and sovereign mistress of our condition and conduct. The body has, except for differences of degree, only one gait and one posture. The soul may be shaped into all varieties of forms, and molds to itself and to its every condition the feelings of the body, and all other accidents. Therefore we must study the soul and look into it, and awaken in it its all-powerful springs. There is no reason, prescription, or might that has power against its inclination and its choice. Out of the many thousands of attitudes at its disposal, let us give it one conducive to our repose and preservation, and we shall be not only sheltered from all harm, but even gratified and flattered, if it please, by ills and pains. The soul profits from everything without distinction. Error and dreams serve it usefully, being suitable stuff for giving us security and contentment.”

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Author:Montaigne, Michel de
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“How can you improve human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature? They appeal to different individuals, and they probably show a tendency to alternate in point of time. The Moralist and the Revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite under the Moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are are work and fresh dynamite is being tamped un place to blow Marx to the moon.”

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Book:Essays
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“The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their "product" not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their "success" something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion.”

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Book:Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations
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“I was by now used to people being surprised by me and my background, and their surprise offended me. I was always having to be what I was looking for in the world, wishing the person I would become already existed — some other I before me. I was forever finding even the tiniest way to identify with someone to escape how empty the world seemed to be of what I was.”

LonelinessIdentityAspirationMinoritiesEssaysMixed RaceAlexander Chee
Book:How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
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“We aren't as solid as we once thought. We're embodied but we're also networks, expanding out into empty space, living on inside machines and in other people's heads, memories and data streams as well as flesh. We're being watched and we do not have control. We long for contact and it makes us afraid. But as long as we're still capable of feeling and expressing vulnerability, intimacy stands a chance.”

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Author:Olivia Laving
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“Art, mythology, religion, philosophy, history, anthropology, science, and medicine along with literature, autobiographies, biographies, essays, memoirs, poetry, and other works of fiction and nonfiction serve as a vast library for us to scour in search of the hidden keys to attaining knowledge and happiness. We glimpse individual revelation along with selective rays of radiance from every person’s conscientious act of documenting their long-term commitment to achieving a gleaming living testament to enlightenment.”

ArtPhilosophyPoetryLiteratureMythologyBiographiesEssaysAnthropologyMemoirsAutobiographies
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Whether people need nature or not, it was clear that nature needed people. But perhaps nature needs us like a hostage needs her captors: nature needs us not to annihilate her, not to run her over, not to cover her with cement, not to chop her down. We can hardly admire ourselves, then, when we stop to accommodate nature's needs: we are dubious heroes who create peril and then save it's victims, we who rescue the animals and the trees from ourselves.”

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Book:Things That Are
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“Personal essayists write in large part to escape pent-up emotional anxiety, retreat behind the typewriter or digital keyboard in an attempt to regroup before blithely pushing forward on the cambered road of life. Some essayists might be uncomfortable reconnoitering their memories and, in a perverse twist, largely write in an effort to forget, to consign their uncomfortable emotional perplexities to a dead letter file. In contrast, I wonder if most people write poetry because they do not wish to wipe their mental kit clear. Poets might write because they wish to remember evocative experiences and they wish to share their feelings.”

PoetsWriters On WritingEssaysMemoir WritingWriting MemoirPoets And PoetryPersonal EssaysEssayistEssay Writing
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”

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Author:T.S. Eliot
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“Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in Don’t Shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”

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Book:The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters
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“A shaman and a writer each serve as their communities’ seers by engaging in extraordinary acts of conscientious study of the past and the present and predicting the future. An inner voice calls to the shaman and an essayistic writer to answer the call that vexes the pernicious spirit of their times. Shamanistic writers induce a trance state of mind where they lose contact with physical reality through a rational disordering of the senses, in an effort to encounter for the umpteenth time the great unknown and the unutterable truths that structure existence. An afflicted person seeking clarification of existence cannot ignore the shamanistic calling of narrative exposition. Thus, I shall continue this longwinded howl – making a personal immortality vessel – into the darkness of night forevermore.”

WritingSelf DiscoveryMemoirStorytellingNarrativeWritersAutobiographyWriters On WritingWriting ProcessEssaysWriting LifeJourney Of LifeMemoir WritingLife StoryImmoralityStory Of My LifeWriting PhilosophyMemoirsShamanismStorytellersWriters On ThinkingPersonal EssaysEssayistJourney Of Self DiscoveryStory Of Your LifeShamanNarrativesEssay WritingStory Of LifeNarrative WritingWriters On Writing BooksWriters VoiceStory Of A SoulShamanic JourneyingShamansJourney Of BecomingShamanism HealingImmortality Of The SoulJourney Of The SoulNarrative IdentityShamanic HealingShamanicJourney Of FaithJourney Of Your LifeImmorality Quotes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Writing is an exhausting and demoralizing task that destroys human conceits. Writing an elongated series of personal essay opens a person’s mind to explore paradoxes and discover previously unrealized personal truths. Writing is as arduous as any trek into the wilderness. Every sentence takes a writer deeper into the jungle of the mind, a world of frightening inconsistencies created by our waking life’s desire that the world of chaos conform to our convenience.”

WritingSelf AwarenessChaosSentencesSelf DiscoveryMemoirWritersSelf KnowledgeAutobiographyWriters On WritingEssaysKnow ThyselfMemoir WritingSelf ActualizationEssayMemoirsSelf Awareness QuotesWriters On ThinkingSelf KnowingWriting MemoirPersonal EssaysEssayistJourney Of Self DiscoverySelf Knowledge QuotesSelf Discovery QuotesEssay WritingSelf AwareSentenceWriters On Writing LifePersonal EssayWriters On Writing BooksSelf AwakeningJourney Of The Mind
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Storytelling creates a healing serum. The thematic unguent of our personal story represents a fusion of the ineffable truths that each of us must discover within ourselves.”

StoriesSelf AwarenessSelf DiscoveryMemoirSelf RealizationStorytellingWriters On WritingWriting ProcessEssaysWriters QuotesMemoir WritingStory Of My LifeWriting PhilosophyMemoirsStorytellersWriters On ThinkingEssayistSelf Discovery QuotesStory Of Your LifeStory Of LifeStory TellingPersonal StoryStories Of PeopleStory Of A SoulStories From The Heart
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“If there was one message I could be known for in the years and centuries after I’m gone, one message for which I’m remembered, if I am remembered at all, it would be the urgent bulletin I’m delivering right here and now: where you are now and what you are now—at this precise moment—is absolutely, one hundred percent okay… and accepting yourself right now for who and what and where you are is not only your best bet, it’s your only bet.”

LifeAcceptanceSelf ConfidenceEssaysMessage
Book:Elsewhere and Otherwise: Essays
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“I come from a worried people. These people worry and are overly cautious. The worried people are very suggestive and read the side effects on every medication to make sure they experience all of them, even the side effects experienced by the placebo people. If it only happens in males, my female people will figure out a way to have that side effect, too. My people worry out of love, though.”

HumorConfidenceSelf AcceptanceOriginalityEssaysFemale Empowerment
Book:Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
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“My personal hell is a place filled with loud, cocky, inked hipster—millennials. It’s a place where every guy looks like a member of Mumford & Sons, and all the women shun makeup. No, it isn’t Lollapalooza, nor an Arcade Fire concert. No, it isn’t some hipster independent coffee shop serving the latest trend in cold brewed coffee and a donut. No, not a craft cocktail lounge playing Daft Punk on vinyl while everyone sits on low striped cushions and corduroy couches wearing color schemes of pants and tops that make no sense.”

HumorPurposeConfidenceIntentionAuthenticitySelf AcceptanceOriginalityEssaysFemale EmpowermentExpectation
Book:Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
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“Dante Alighieri wrote his first book in the prosimetrum genre – La Vita Nuova – in 14th century Florence. Since I’m compiling this collection – my first indie publication – in Florence, just blocks from Dante’s house, and since his book involves a lost love, and ‘A New Life,’ I thought it fitting to emulate this style in my own casual, intuitive fashion. My hope is that the juxtaposition of poems, journal entries, essays and prose will create a story; a memoir in anarchistic vignettes.”

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Book:Dreaming in Night Vision: A Story in Vignettes
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“Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked. Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”

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Book:The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters
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