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Needless to say, great love is very rare because great individuals are very rare (but surely your mind is telling you right now that you are the exception)

It is not enough to have a noble desire or great ambition; one must be worthy of what he dreams of, and wishes for.

Beware of the average man and the average woman, beware their love. Their love is average, seeks average. — Charles Bukowski

كُن عظيمًا ليختاركَ الحبُّ العظيم، وإلا فَنَصيبُكَ حبٌّ يَسفُّ التراب، ويتمرّغ في الأوحال، فتظَلَّ على ما أنت، أو تهبط به بدلًا مِن أنْ تسمو إلى أبراجٍ لَم تَرَها عين، ولَم تخطُر عجائبُها على قلبِ بشر. — مي زيادة

كتبها بدر شاكر السياب في مدينة الرمادي أثناء عمله مدرسا للغة الانجليزية عام ١٩٤٨م

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Descartes' Error by António R. Damásio / An Aside on Neurochemical Explanations (p.97): The popular antidepressant Prozac, which acts by blocking the reuptake of serotonin and probably increasing its availability, has received wide attention; the notion that low serotonin levels might be correlated with a tendency towards violence has surfaced in the popular press. The problem is that it is not the absence or low amount of serotonin per se that "causes" a certain manifestation. Serotonin is part of an exceedingly complicated mechanism which operates at the level of molecules, synapses, local circuits and systems, and in which sociocultural factors, past and present, also intervene powerfully. A satisfactory explanation can arise only from a more comprehensive view of the entire process, in which the relevant variables of a specific problem, such as depression or social adaptability, are analyzed in detail.

الآباء هم معظم الرجال العاديين الذين حولهم الحُب إلى أبطال، ومغامرين، ورواة قصص، ومغنيين للأغاني، قد نشعر إنهم مرساة تعيقنا، في الوقت الذي يكونون فيه شراعاً توصلنا، هم وحدهم الذين يستطيعون إهدائنا اعظم هبّات الوجود، حينما يؤمنون بنا. - أب عراقيّ يوصل أبنته الى مدرستها في ذي قار أثناء موجة الأمطار والفيضانات.

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On the reign of Fortuna The world is indifferent to humans and to the individual. It is evidently not committed to, and does not promise any justice, harmony, or happiness to mankind. We are logs of wood thrown into the chaotic and violent current of life, until we find our demise in the dreadful waterfall of death. Justice does not exist, except for what we make of it (and we make it crooked). Happiness is but a fleeting moment already poisoned by the clocks that announce its end and mourn its decay. And on the other side of that moment, there will always be despair and emptiness. Children die too young, having seen nothing of this life. Elders die too late, suffering agonies and indignity that muddle the already muddled waters of their long years (so evident in the wrinkles of their faces). Evil-doers get away with their vanity, and saints are crucified for their innocence. We love to say that our times are bad, because we are too afraid to admit that all times are bad. We love to say that God will make everything right, because we are too afraid to admit that God had all of eternity to make things right and he didn't. What keeps us going is the drunkening, mind-dimming belief that the next day will be better, and if it wasn't, the next one will be. Until our final day catches us by surprise. Besides our stubborn instinct to find meaning, our lives seem to be driven by cosmic luck. Your birth, your name, your beliefs, the woman you love and the company you enjoy, the job you work in, the family you belong to, your dearest moments as well as your darkest and lowest... they are like the shapes of the clouds: ephemeral, meaningless, and most importantly, eternally and universally insignificant. This world, the only one there is, is the backgammon board of Fortuna. She is the goddess of luck, good and bad. And she is blind.

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On a second thought, almost all nostalgia is a feeling of longing for an imagined past, not a real one. The perfect past is only perfect as we remember it now (not as we lived it). It's only perfect as a past moment, as something we can look at from a distance. Just as we enjoy war movies because we're watching them through a screen, and not actually living through the war. I guess nostalgia is simply: The past, beautified and reimagined. By feeling nostalgic, we create a myth of a blissful past so we can distract ourselves from the imperfect present... Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do.