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9e406b4 Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. science life philosophy paradigm-shift thomas-kuhn chaos-theory paradigm mathematics physics James Gleick
b41edb8 Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world - and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem erfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them. politics life industry ignorance food Michael Pollan
766c380 This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. sex literature fiction morality god life love Julian Barnes
bb57597 Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are. tragedy perseverance humanity change life cataclysm revelation-of-self humility transformation Marianne Williamson
b65bfea He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here? It didn't help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating ... Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn't taste so good. past heartbreak life love nico-di-angelo memory Rick Riordan
e24a41a Belief, hard work, love-you have those things, you can do anything. life love hardwork belief Mitch Albom
5b836ac You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? death life Ursula K. Le Guin
63e2469 He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them. life Katherine Paterson
ea86d84 This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand. life Michael Cunningham
ecb6bb3 I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear it. life Jerry Spinelli
e74ae60 I don't mind pointing out some of the failings of old age, because we are all headed in that direction, unless of course we take our own lives before we become a burden. I'm not advocating suicide, oh wait, I guess I am. suicide life Amy Sedaris
5577880 I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be. stars poetry life sense-of-wonder pride longing Roger Zelazny
7f04cf3 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. ... What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. life grass graves Walt Whitman
bc0776d His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion. passion life love curiosity desire psychology Oscar Wilde
929a8f4 The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the good byes that tell us we're still alive. life Stephen King
523bfb8 The greatest happiness [...] is to sneeze when you want to. life L.M. Montgomery
32b684c sometimes we have absolutely no idea where we are, we need the smallest clue to show us where to begin. lessons life Cecelia Ahern
877ded0 Thy will be done, my Lord. Because you know the weakness in the heart of your children, and you assign each of them only the burden they can bear. May you understand my love-because it is the only thing I have that is really mine, the only thing that I will be able to take with me into the next life. Please allow it to be courageous and pure; please make it capable of surviving the snares of the world. prayer world heart life love courageous done pure lord weakness will children Paulo Coelho
d1c9400 They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure. life path Joseph Campbell
178c3f1 Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive. life philosophy Murakami Haruki
96986e0 Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away. perfection future work life starting Haruki Murakami
cdd9abd Everything is true,' he said. 'Everything anybody has ever thought.' 'Will you be all right?' 'I'll be all right,' he said, and thought, And I'm going to die. Both those are true, too. life truth thought Philip K. Dick
ae8e80e He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. lies life truth George R.R. Martin
fa8e730 Love is messy. If you really love someone, you can't avoid the pain. People die, people leave, things change, but sometimes it all works life love inspirational Danielle Steel
bd811f1 Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history. man life human-nature instincts thought Ayn Rand
d209568 "When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes." death life favourite-quote excerpt so-it-goes novel Kurt Vonnegut
fb8ef7a God, he was probably too young to be this old, but life had a way of being about experience, rather than calendar days. life wisdom J.R. Ward
b54cc2e Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear. life girls Neil Gaiman
5d90e42 "Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested." The boy remembered an old proverb from his country. It said that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn." life Paulo Coelho
8a1edb0 "You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim" life parenting Jeannette Walls
0b3f581 When you're thinking about the rest of your life, you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road. life Chuck Palahniuk
3f39f5a On what slender threads do life and fortune hang... ! life instability Alexandre Dumas
580827f a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life. writing life Tobias Wolff
11e5392 The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day. science life human-life Carl Sagan
f567eea That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds earth nature life revelations Orson Scott Card
606e499 That's the worst...or the best...of real life, Anne. It won't let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable...and succeeding...even when you're determined to be unhappy and romantic. life L.M. Montgomery
f33dd3c I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again. moving-on life love Khaled Hosseini
5ce8609 I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all. life love wise-last-chapter fairness William Goldman
4f41c64 I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit. illusion life truth Irvin D. Yalom
c534621 Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone. life truth status open-heart nowhere Mitch Albom
1f74416 "My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers--even the answers they themselves believed. I don't know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being "politically conscious"--as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty." meaning life certainty questioning questions searching Ta-Nehisi Coates
9473c34 There you'll find the place I love most in the world. The place where I grew thin from dreaming. My village, rising from the plain. Shaded with trees and leaves like a piggy bank filled with memories. You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night: all the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur...the pure murmuring of life. life village Juan Rulfo
798f9a5 It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck. life luck Haruki Murakami
06c3f97 If we are alone, we become more alone. Life is strange loneliness life strange Paulo Coelho
64c1aa4 The greatest minds are like film, they take the negatives and develop themselves in darkness... pain harry-potter life wisdom j-k-rowling negativity hard-times Brandi L. Bates
6c3f191 Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there. life Haruki Murakami
6f3d6e7 Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life,the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. fate positivity strength life love growth nietzsche Joseph Campbell
ca3a332 Sometimes, things don't work out the way we want them to. life inspirational Nicholas Sparks
5f15eb8 I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand. death change life maturing Ray Bradbury
5ff668b Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive. life John Fowles
114122e Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth. life truth Philip Pullman
dd2edc2 Living with life is very hard. Mostly we do our best to stifle life--to be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquillised or raging. Extremes have the same effect; they insulate us from the intensity of life. And extremes--whether of dullness or fury--successfully prevent feeling. I know our feelings can be so unbearable that we employ ingenious strategies--unconscious strategies--to keep those feelings away. We do a feelings-swap, where we avoid feeling sad or lonely or afraid or inadequate, and feel angry instead. It can work the other way, too--sometimes you do need to feel angry, not inadequate; sometimes you do need to feel love and acceptance, and not the tragic drama of your life. It takes courage to feel the feeling--and not trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even transfer it altogether to another person. You know how in couples one person is always doing all the weeping or the raging while the other one seems so calm and reasonable? I understood that feelings were difficult for me although I was overwhelmed by them. feelings life extremes inadequate living-life avoidance suppression Jeanette Winterson
49c6a54 One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen. science life Philip Pullman
9f4ae66 "I don't want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so friendship life where-rainbows-end Cecelia Ahern
11ff356 Experience is a question of instinct about life. life Oscar Wilde
d94cd68 It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class--in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding--but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does. life ordinary-life normalcy dying Mohsin Hamid
9db1bd6 Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die. life sensibility humans Markus Zusak
ab50ed5 It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted. life persecution E.M. Forster
60bcd0a Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that's just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. fate life Haruki Murakami
f636a80 Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different. people life electronic-communities interactions doing Kurt Vonnegut
519b0f9 Don't you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there's a huge possibility you'll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn't that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don't you find that scary? people life love Haruki Murakami
89bfe03 There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. life Willa Cather
b73b4b9 Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it.... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing. learning life winning survival Orson Scott Card
cedb63b Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life-in her two lives-she felt absolutely unstoppable. life scream hazel-levesque Rick Riordan
50b2d2f The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it. youth life Evelyn Waugh
0c43aea We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so. suicide life Michael Cunningham
588924c He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague . . . He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightening on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands. life truth introverts W. Somerset Maugham
28333a7 Cat, I'll let you in on a little secret. We don't all love our jobs every day. And doing something you have passion for doesn't make the work part of it any easier...It just makes you less likely to quit. passion persistence work life knitting georgia job Kate Jacobs
607f1e4 Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal. life siddhartha self thought Hermann Hesse
83b02bd Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day. It is beautiful and this seems like the best time to live and the best place life Nancy E. Turner
cad0a67 The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life... Or end it... One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn't right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below. life Sherrilyn Kenyon
37216e3 There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. living life living-life L.M. Montgomery
d3d649b In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out. mortality death life Cormac McCarthy
28ac45e There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died. money terry-pratchett greed life philosophy-religion going-postal Terry Pratchett
daea7e7 It's not me but the world that's deranged. world life society Haruki Murakami
0594d24 Love is the most common miracle. miracle life love John Green
aca9b07 "A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." romance living life love F. Scott Fitzgerald
cb097a4 The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes. nature life evil Ursula K. Le Guin
9c6f68c "But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that wil carry him into places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision." - The Alchemist, Paulo Cohelo -" -- life-lessons life inpirational-quotes the-alchemist Paulo Coelho
6380a03 We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management? reality religion life truth meaning-of-life fact Tom Robbins
13cdaad The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for. man existence light death darkness life cradle common-sense calm afterlife eternity life-after-death Vladimir Nabokov
84510ef It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were. life love fulfilling sorrows dignity honor Nicholas Sparks
fe345eb Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved. tragedy death life love Joseph Campbell
5343dd9 "You wouldn't have taken Rose to such a place, would you?" "Of course not, but she is a little girl, and I'm-" "My life", he interrupted quietly. "You're my entire life. If anything ever happens to you, Holly, there is nothing left for me." romance life love zach Lisa Kleypas
7424e4d One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth. life truth Peter Kreeft
79fb381 To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation and when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. inspiration motivation life Paulo Coelho
3725b35 "Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van's arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual's life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges." life nabakov real-things towers fog things perfect Vladimir Nabokov
9558cdb But I knew the truth and that's why I was so sad. Every moment before this one depends on this one. Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment. life paths moments Jonathan Safran Foer
22ef26f There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92) living life living-life L.M. Montgomery
f0a8ae4 There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. courage world kindness life love inspirational fortitude brave precious stewardship grace deception kind eyes Marilynne Robinson
f94f88f His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief... Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss. loss life life-and-death grieve nature-of-things Robin Hobb
167a81a What else do I have to offer? Nothing happens to me anymore. That's the reality of getting old, and I guess that's really the crux of the matter. I'm not ready to be old yet. life Sara Gruen
811f294 It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by. life doll Rumer Godden
4d73647 Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy. life perspective Richard Bach
36b51c7 So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.. life love struggling F. Scott Fitzgerald
2d3543f In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. life Leo Tolstoy
afee89c I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell. life Rudyard Kipling
ee4c320 We make our purpose. life purpose Carl Sagan
84eb735 I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life's essential absurdity. life Stephen King
9db0a39 It's a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming in to it. Tears from the start life tears Ron Rash
a660bc6 The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed. meaning life meaning-without-god Richard Dawkins
92e3099 The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me. death-and-dying life goodbyes Raymond Chandler
6a7c7f7 It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way. humanity life Oscar Wilde
613d747 Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. dark life earthsea self Ursula K. Le Guin
f0c86c8 `ndm ymnHk llh lHy@ , mn wjbk (wmn Hqk kky'n bshry) 'n tjd shyy'an jmylan fyh , mhm kn Dy'ylan god life novel Elizabeth Gilbert
a33f01c Three weeks ago, he'd seen hail fall from the sky, only to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it's important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion. life Nicholas Sparks
9b2d2e0 A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. life right Paulo Coelho
57f811d Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason life Charles Dickens
3694228 Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us. life Victor Hugo
f12d3ef Things change when you're not in danger anymore. change life danger Mitch Albom
8f2f2e8 Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn't. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment. life failure Richard Matheson
cd4c555 Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination. life Jess Walter
57260e1 We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. present thoughts past life Kurt Vonnegut
f54acdd A mind is like a puzzle; you must unlock it to read its hidden secrets. mind reality life Melissa de la Cruz
7398a96 Man, it was a good thing vampires didn't get cancer. Lately he'd been chain-smoking like a felon. humor life cancer smoking J.R. Ward
093844f Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced. faith life memory Markus Zusak
8cdd43d The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you ... your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option - a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon - but he couldn't see one. fate destiny life reflection nico-di-angelo Rick Riordan
8582517 All we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning reason life love inspirational paulo-coelho meanings understand sufferings Paulo Coelho
3bcc5e9 Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive. life sublime Terry Pratchett
141d014 Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward? How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive? death life despair Terry Pratchett
84549d2 Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary. life road journey Anne Carson
d5b9b6f It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy. joy life weird Elizabeth Kostova
328485e People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different. people life Sue Monk Kidd
3063015 Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind. humor life Jonathan Carroll
82a18ac I'm an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It's an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner. life observe Christine Feehan
e17564f "There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die." nature fun life stillness quiet Beryl Markham
be5d175 Isn't 'not to be bored' one of the principal goals of life? life Gustave Flaubert
112c8ba Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said. life suppose Raymond Carver
4be6a6d Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare. life love nick-norah-s-infinite-playlist reality-check nightmare Rachel Cohn
ff6d9a4 Don't think about it. Don't think about what could have been. It's too unbearable. humor life Sophie Kinsella
41ee9a8 Enclose your heart in times of need with the steel of your determination and your strength. In doing this, all things will be bearable. life inspirational hardship Lora Leigh
f70e0da Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it has given me . It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit into me now. I have an organic life, finally, not necessarily the one people imagined for me, or tried to get me to have. I have the life I longed for. I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I would be. life maturing getting-older contentment experience aging Anne Lamott
1b2c1d0 Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out. life reasons choices horses Jeannette Walls
f5fd6a5 He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death. unhappiness life Graham Greene
6511683 "Are you born again?" he asked, as we taxied down the runway. He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon. I did not know how to answer for a moment. "Yes," I said. "I am." life inspirational Anne LaMott
801c646 Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live life love Andrea Levy
74a3434 A person's destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance. fate life Haruki Murakami
f7f1a8e Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life. universe mind nature spirit religion science life behaviorism behaviorists first-cause ivan-pavlov ivan-petrovich-pavlov john-b-watson john-broadus-watson stimuli john-watson pavlov cosmology astronomy watson goal environment determinism ethics theology dogma materialism naturalism consciousness science-and-religion life-after-death physics psychology Nikola Tesla
b398fa9 Before you came into my life, I believed that God had abandoned me. Now I know that He has blessed me beyond measure. ~Sir Bannor life love Teresa Medeiros
3103cba There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. life Charles Darwin
271a64c After long enough, everyone in the world will be you enemy. time life enemy Chuck Palahniuk
08d5c5e The fog is clearing; life is a matter of taste. suicide living life Frank Wedekind
e5bb712 Better lose your life than your soul... life louisa-may-alcott souls Louisa May Alcott
44fb695 Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man.' Valjean, who did not recall having made any promise, was silent. The bishop had spoken the words slowly and deliberately. He concluded with a solemn emphasis: Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God. thoughts god life Victor Hugo
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