Some Words of Wisdom

There are moments when encouragement is needed, not from friends, family, or even ourselves, but from people who are dead, specifically from writers who have passed away but whose work has been left behind for humanity to consume. 

Here are some of my favorite words of wisdom from authors who have lived lives drastically different from my own but whose writings have ultimately enriched my life. (There are many more books that I can quote, but these books were the ones at my disposal.)

A Fire Next Time – James Baldwin

• “Remember that: I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad that day, too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived. And now you must survive because we love you…” (6).

• “Take no one’s word for anything, including mine – but trust your experience” (6).

• “The word ‘sensual’ is not intended to bring to mind quivering dusky maidens or priapic black studs. I am referring to something much simpler and much less fanciful. To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the forces of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread” (35).

• “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death – ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life” (75).

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House from Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde

• “It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support”(112).

Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger from Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde

• “To search for power within myself means I must be willing to move through being afraid to whatever lies beyond. If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies’ arsenals. My history cannot be used to feather my enemies’ arrows then, and that lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me~ness, as I discover you in myself” (146-47).

• “Who did we expect the other to be who is not yet at peace with our own selves? I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you? We do not love ourselves, therefore we cannot love each other. Because we see in each other’s face our own face, the face we never stopped wanting. Because we survived and survival breeds desire for more self. A face we never stopped wanting at the same time as we try to obliterate it “(155).

Letters to A Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke

• “You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them” (35). 

• “[Love] it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things”  (54).

• “Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you” (71).

Hopefully these quotes can help encourage you in any way that you need at this very moment. 

• college
• health
• mental health
• quotes
• wisdom