I love quotes. Picking just one of the many, many favourites I have is a challenge. So I've picked two, one by Nietzsche and one by Dickens. First my all time favourite:
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star" -Nietzsche
This quote hangs above my desk as a reminder that a little craziness is a good thing and the chaos that lives in my brain will contribute to the creation of something lovely. This quote inspires me to write.
And now the second, which i love for both the content and style:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." -Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
For the longest time I thought this quote was just "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." (Apparently I skimmed through A Tale of Two Cities!) When I recently looked it up I was delighted by the entirety of this exquisitely written quote. And struck by how applicable these words are in today's world, 150 years after it was written in 1859.
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