Normlessness Quotes & Sayings

Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I'm going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig. — Aaron Sorkin

And I definitely gravitate toward people who use laughter to pull themselves out of the abyss. — Lea Thompson

It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie - Durkheim's word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, "normlessness.") We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago. — Jonathan Haidt

Depression is the inability to construct a future. — Rollo May

Their skin hung loose over their bodies like suits they had inherited from larger ancestors, with the trousers ridiculously baggy. — Roald Dahl

Do you think it takes true pain to experience true pleasure? — Gena Showalter

I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand. — Alice Hoffman

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don't notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms, and it's exactly those things about oneself and the world that are invisible because they are woven into one's fabric that are the truth. Just like a person can't see his own eyes. You search and search and search, and the truth, by definition, is exactly that which you don't find. You don't see the truth, you are the truth. "Habits of attention are reflexes of the complete character of an individual." And how could you notice your own habits of attention? By writing. Well, at their most profound level? It doesn't make any difference. That is the point. It's like Zen. The truth is not straining for the truth, the truth is in effortlessness. The truth is in being, not trying. Aw hell, that doesn't leave much too chew on. — Richard Hell

My love for Sydney burned just as strongly. Life was good. — Richelle Mead

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult. — Ken Follett

By a tranquil mind, I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered. — Marcus Aurelius

Life isn't long enough to enjoy and understand all at the same time. You have to decide which is more important — Pedro Juan Gutierrez

I'm staring at him with my mouth open - again - as he tucks his shirt back in. When he's finished, he takes a step closer to me. I stand perfectly still. His grin dies into a seductive curve of his lips that makes my knees feel funny. I'm completely spellbound and embarrassingly turned on when he bends to whisper in my ear.
"You'd better close those lips before I'm tempted to kiss them and really give you something to be all hot and bothered about." -Cash — M. Leighton