If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but that mark of a fake messiah.
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.
I think in the end, you would have stayed with me, out of obligation...or maybe comfort. Maybe I was safe to you, and you needed to feel that. I know how scared you get of the unknown. To you...I must be kind of a security blanket. Do you see now, how that doesn't work for me? I don't want to be there, simply because the idea of me being gone is too...scary. I want to be someone's everything. I want fire and passion, and love that's returned, equally. I want to be someone's heart... Even if it means breaking my own.
The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal; it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
With every civil right there has to be a corresponding civil obligation.
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill, requires only our silence, which costs nothing.
...I want first of all - in fact, as an end to these other desires - to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central cor to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact - to borrow from the language of the saints -to live 'in grace' as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony...