Beauty? It seems to me that beauty is an example of what the philosopher’s call reification, to regard the abstraction as a thing. Beauty is a series of experiences. It is not a noun. People have experiences. If they feel an intense aesthetic pleasure, they take that experience and project it into the object. They experience the idea of beauty, but beauty in and of itself does not exist.

Louise Bourgeois from a conversation with Bill Beckley, 1997 (via floriental)

Do you know what it is to burn and burn, and to know while burning, that you are freeing yourself from everything around you?

Kahlil Gibran, in a letter to Mary Haskell, from Beloved Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell, and her private journal
(via luthienne)

Just like murder, labor trafficking cannot be waived by a heartfelt apology, by a cathartic journalistic exercise, or by taking the victim’s remains back to her relatives. Alex Tizon, in this story, was complicit in his parents’ abusive treatment of Eudocia Pulido.

Damayan Migrant Workers Association statement on Alex Tizon’s story in The Atlantic, originally on Facebook