There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work… In old age we should wish still to have passions strong enough to prevent us turning in on ourselves. One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.

Simone de Beauvoir via The Marginalian

“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.” 

― Martin Buber

‘It could be that God has not absconded but spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem.’

Annie Dillard via Katherine May

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

“Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

— Dante Alighieri

Seen at the Substack of Philosophors. Though I have long known these lines, I think I have just found the most informative explanation in Prue Shaw's Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity.