Home > Topic > The only condition
1 " So what else can I tell you?" I asked. " I mean, to get you to reveal Lily to me." She triangled her fingers under her chin. " Let's see. Are you a bed wetter?" " Am I a...?" " Bed wetter. I am asking if you are a bed wetter." I knew she was trying to get me to blink. But I wouldn't." No, ma'am. I leave my beds dry." " Not even a little drip every now and then?" " I'm trying hard to see how this is germane." " I'm gauging your honesty. What is the last periodical you read methodically?" " Vogue. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, that's mostly because I was in my mother's bathroom, enduring a rather long bowel movement. You know, the kind that requires Lamaze." " What adjective do you feel the most longing for?" That was easy. " I will admit I have a soft spot for fanciful." " Let's say I have a hundred million dollars and offer it to you. The only condition is that if you take it, a man in China will fall off his bicycle and die. What do you do?" " I don't understand why it matters whether he's in China or not. And of course I wouldn't take the money." The old woman nodded." Do you think Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual?" " All I can say for sure is that he never made a pass at me." " Are you a museumgoer?" " Is the pope a churchgoer?" " When you see a flower painted by Georgia O'Keefe, what comes to mind?" " That's just a transparent ploy to get me to say the word vagina, isn't it? There. I said it. Vagina. "
2 " Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free. "
― Thich Nhat Hanh , The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
3 " Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another. "
4 " The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with deep contentment, as if this was the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all 'possessed' fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way. If he ever reads these lines, he must believe me. I am writing calmly, lucidly while waiting for him to come home, as one waits for the chosen lover, the eternal one. "
― Anaïs Nin , Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932
5 " Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him. This of course not antagonistic by sympathetic to the growth of all men as brothers. Free emulation not imitation of the " bravest and the best" is to be expected of him. Uncommon he may and will and should become as inspiration to his fellows, not a reflection upon them, not to be resented but accepted--and in this lies the only condition of the common man's survival. So only is he intrinsic to democracy.Persistently holding quality above quantity only as he attempts to live a superior life of his own, and to whatsoever degree in whatever case he finds it; this is his virtue in a democracy such as ours was designed to be.Only this sense of proportion affords tranquility of spirit, in itself beauty, in either character of action. Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm. The assumption of the " firm countenance, lips compressed" in denial or resentment is not known to her as it is known to civilization. Such negation by human countenance may be moral (civilization is inclined to morality) but even so not nature. Again exuberance is repose but never excess. "
6 " Success, as we categorize it, is a simple and pitiable thing. It's only a matter of degree of wanting, and accident. Wanting plays the major role in everybody's life--accident all the others. The only condition any of us can be sure of in this universe is wanting. How tepid or burning hot the want is depends on accident. But since accident isn't really as accidental as we'd like to think--accident is the great fooler and comforter of mankind--we become 'successful' exactly to the degree we want. "
