2985218
|
As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension. It was just happening, like time, like geography. The web seemed so inherently endless that it didn't occur to me what wasn't there. My appetite for pictures and videos and news and music was so gigantic now that if something was shrinking, something immesurable, how would I notice? ...Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine loosing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time.
|
|
life
need
internet
|
Miranda July |
d8a6312
|
"Being in love is...anxious," he said. "Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is...you're naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all...I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her"
|
|
love-quotes
inspiration
life
love
truth
naked
|
Audrey Niffenegger |
2bab987
|
There are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only bad cultivators.
|
|
life
|
Victor Hugo |
d1f2e5d
|
At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.
|
|
life
|
Mitch Albom |
4820e9a
|
When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him.
|
|
meaning
life
street
left
direction
person
right
|
Denis Johnson |
1ab0167
|
I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
|
|
youth
life
plans
|
Thomas Hardy |
e8d4510
|
Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it bore stamped upon it a seal of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not even the slow smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide the shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the light of those glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty, and it seemed to say: 'Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is, undying and half-divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.
|
|
immortality
sorrow
beauty
life
goddess
|
H. Rider Haggard |
11bdec8
|
Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards--the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees--have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with.
|
|
life
adulthood
|
Wallace Stegner |
c08b8a8
|
Don't be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.
|
|
freedom
fear
life
wisdom
afraid
marguerite-duras
|
Marguerite Duras |
2c374aa
|
Every nowhere is somewhere[...]
|
|
life
inspirational
journey
|
David Mitchell |
cf91a90
|
Once you go on welfare it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case. You're scarred for life.
|
|
state-benefits
life
welfare
|
Jeannette Walls |
3bf34b9
|
But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get
|
|
want
life
get
wish
desire
|
Anne Lamott |
4e6286c
|
This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore... This is the thick of things. So much is crowded into the middle-- ...too much to name, too much to think about.
|
|
life-lessons
life
|
Billy Collins |
d34a2e9
|
World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of a bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap'n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap'n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds.
|
|
life
food
|
Neal Stephenson |
54d1f00
|
Let us not become so cautious that we forget to live.
|
|
hope
life
inspirational
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
5821f89
|
When a man showed up you didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at yours, because it's painful to see somebody so clear that it's like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to to look away and lose him completely. You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it may be, or you could relax and lose yourself.
|
|
reality
life
truth
inspirational
decision-making
|
Ken Kesey |
7041d8e
|
Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.
|
|
life
word
growth
|
John Piper |
ebf8a7e
|
All this hoping for nothing-or someone-that's maybe hopeless
|
|
life
|
Rachel Cohn & David Levithan |
81863c4
|
I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.
|
|
time
life
wine
|
Ernest Hemingway |
9875758
|
Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.
|
|
humanity
life
ownership
humans
|
Daniel Quinn |
500d825
|
The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter
|
|
life
inspirational
haruki-murakami
survivor
growing-up
hard
trees
growth
survival
strong
|
Haruki Murakami |
5040bcf
|
Once you're lost, you panic. You're in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, 'cause when you get in the mood all you can think about is what's right under your nose - that's sex, all right.
|
|
sex
life
|
Haruki Murakami |
81a8241
|
And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.
|
|
life
|
Julian Barnes |
092c57b
|
...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.
|
|
money
life
jhumpa-lahiri
the-namesake
american
|
Jhumpa Lahiri |
7964300
|
Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.
|
|
past
life
parents-and-children
memory
|
Julian Barnes |
d9c28d7
|
We want what's in this world but we also want what ain't.
|
|
life
the-world
impossible-things
possible
|
Ron Rash |
118695a
|
Life was too short and ended too suddenly. If you didn't take advantage of what you had today, tomorrow it might be ripped from you.
|
|
life
cerise
ilona-andrews
the-edge
|
Ilona Andrews |
ecefb57
|
God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness -- to glory?
|
|
life
|
Charlotte Brontë |
771f01c
|
Into the silence rips a sound that makes me let go of Max's hand and cover my ears. It is like the strafe of a bullet, nails on a chalkboard, promises being broken. It's a note I have never heard - this chord of pure pain - and it takes a moment to realize it is coming from me.
|
|
life
|
Jodi Picoult |
4ae92b2
|
There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the most inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.
|
|
reality
life
realization
|
Nicholas Sparks |
e2cd0b5
|
Nix: I'm actively involved in steering the lives of thousands of beings. Which directly affects hundreds of thousands, which indirectly affects millions, with a ripple effect reaching billions. If someone said, 'It ain't easy being Nixie,' I wouldn't cal him a liar.
|
|
life
nix
nix-the-ever-knowing
soothsaying
|
Kresley Cole |
fc543b0
|
"Is there anyone's life story you don't want to know?" "Not really." His expression was unexpectedly serious. "Because people make a story of their lives. Gains, losses, tragedy and triumph--you can tell a lot about someone simply by what they put into each category. You can learn a lot about what you put into each category by your reaction to them. They teach you about yourself without ever intending to do it--and they teach you a lot about life."
|
|
story
life
rennick
|
Michelle Sagara West |
b1b456b
|
If/when I die, do not want Pam lonely. Want her to remarry, have full life. As long as new husband is nice guy. Gentle guy. Religious guy. Very caring + good to kids. But kids not fooled. Kids prefer dead dad (i.e., me) to religious guy. Pale, boring, religious guy, with no oomph, who wears weird sweaters and is always a little sad, due to, cannot get boner, due to physical ailment. Ha ha. Death very much on my mind tonight, future reader. Can it be true? That I will die? That Pam, kids will die? Is awful. Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like. Note to self: try harder, in all things, to be better person.
|
|
death
life
|
George Saunders |
cad9122
|
I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
|
|
work
life
|
Mary Karr |
3991672
|
Your attitude toward others, work, and your daily life is a reflection of your attitude toward God.
|
|
woman
faith
god
life
love
reflect
daily
christian
reflection
walk
|
Elizabeth George |
70cba04
|
"STRAUSS:Have you ever thought about putting those experiences into a book? RICHIE:I did decide to write about what i experienced in climbing to the top. And finally when I got there, I discovered what was at the top.You know what was there?
|
|
experiences
writing
life
finally
top
climbing
|
Neil Strauss |
4042069
|
I understood that he left me at the end of his long life just as naturally as the leaves fall from the trees.
|
|
life
tree
leaves
|
Arthur Golden |
4389103
|
Today we have made a fetish of choice; but a chosen death is forbidden. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learnt to cling more abjectly to life.
|
|
suicide
life
dying-animals
straw-dogs
humans
|
John Gray |
a559d9a
|
The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.
|
|
life
growth
|
Jack Kerouac |
98b1949
|
"Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly."
|
|
life
|
Marisha Pessl |
6c50428
|
You ever think how the most minor decision can change the entire direction of your life? Like, say you miss your bus one morning, so you buy that second cup of coffee, buy a scratch ticket while you're at it. The scratch ticket hits. Suddenly you don't have to take the bus anymore. You drive to work in a Lincoln. But you get in a car crash and die. All because you missed your bus one day. I'm just saying there are threads, okay? Threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.
|
|
life
|
Dennis Lehane |
0bc53b9
|
Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement.
|
|
life
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
38e08e0
|
Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.
|
|
pain
suffering
persistence
strength
life
endurance
challenges
|
Alexandre Dumas |
78f9986
|
When you cultivate a godly thought life your soul will shine and you will exhibit the presence of the Lord in you.
|
|
god
life
exhibit
shine
godly
presence
cultivate
lord
christian
thought
soul
|
Elizabeth George |
8281505
|
It's lonely to say goodbye. Very lonely. Partings are the beginnings of new meetings. Beginnings happen because there are endings...Meetings. Beginnings. It's not too late...to believe in them after the fact.
|
|
hope
life
inspirational
|
Natsuki Takaya |
7bab957
|
Art is long and life is brief and mortality looms.
|
|
mortality
life
margaret-atwood
the-robber-bride
life-is-short
|
Margaret Atwood |
9231bdd
|
I just think the world ought to be more sort of organized.' 'That's just fantasy,' said Twoflower. 'I know. That's the trouble.' Rincewind sighed again.
|
|
humour
fantasy
life
|
Terry Pratchett |
4b755c5
|
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
|
|
learning
life
love
lesson
|
John Irving |
1b7f97e
|
There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice -- in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire.
|
|
hope
life
love
|
Jacqueline Carey |
33eb66d
|
"UP You wake up filled with dread. There seems no reason for it. Morning light sifts through the window, there is birdsong, you can't get out of bed. It's something about the crumpled sheets hanging over the edge like jungle foliage, the terry slippers gaping their dark pink mouths for your feet, the unseen breakfast--some of it in the refrigerator you do not dare to open--you will not dare to eat. What prevents you? The future. The future tense, immense as outer space. You could get lost there. No. Nothing so simple. The past, its density and drowned events pressing you down, like sea water, like gelatin filling your lungs instead of air. Forget all that and let's get up. Try moving your arm. Try moving your head. Pretend the house is on fire and you must run or burn. No, that one's useless. It's never worked before. Where is it coming form, this echo, this huge No that surrounds you, silent as the folds of the yellow curtains, mute as the cheerful Mexican bowl with its cargo of mummified flowers? (You chose the colours of the sun, not the dried neutrals of shadow. God knows you've tried.) Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live.
|
|
poetry
future
fear
past
life
forgiveness
|
Margaret Atwood |
0ea7a0a
|
"Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?" I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?"
|
|
life
love
|
Jodi Picoult |
19a789a
|
Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies.
|
|
passion
dream
life
strange
|
Truman Capote |
9f19d53
|
Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is an unwise course, because, if we are entirely unprepared, the tragedy of life can be devastating.
|
|
spirituality
life
|
Karen Armstrong |
537177f
|
People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.
|
|
pain
relationships
life
love
|
Emma Forrest |
a3eacc4
|
One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
|
|
life
rodolphe
unconventional
madame-bovary
conventions
gustave-flaubert
duty
society
|
Gustave Flaubert |
9d97e4c
|
Death often is the point of life's joke.
|
|
life
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
064e8e5
|
We don't need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are riches, more humane, and much more joyful.
|
|
individuality
life
museums
art
|
Orhan Pamuk |
03e5080
|
With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.
|
|
universe
life
purpose
|
Orson Scott Card |
01b30f9
|
ljmy` shGwfwn bls`d@ w lknh klqmr lmHjwb wr sHb lsht
|
|
life
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
c064b5c
|
...Not that it was unjust; not that the scales were forced out of balance. Where there had been good, it showed as clearly. Kindnesses, accomplishments, all those were present, too.
|
|
life
|
Richard Matheson |
9c64de2
|
And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again; for this is the message given you by the Gods, the karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.
|
|
karma
meaning
life
|
Marion Zimmer Bradley |
31071c3
|
At birth we are red-faced, round, intense, pure. The crimson fire of universal consciousness burns in us. Gradually, however, we are devoured by our parents, gulped by schools, chewed up by peers, swallowed by social institutions, wolfed by bad habits, and gnawed by age; and by that time we have been digested, cow style, in those six stomachs, we emerge a single disgusting shade of brown. The lesson of the beet, then, is this: hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find that you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means, Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.
|
|
life
|
Tom Robbins |
028f225
|
Oh dear, life is pretty tough sometimes, isn't it?
|
|
life
louisa-may-alcott
|
Louisa May Alcott |
128a0e4
|
The only thing she really enjoyed was a funeral. You knew where you were with a corpse. Nothing more could happen to it. But while there was life there was fear.
|
|
relationships
life
|
L.M. Montgomery |
e54ec74
|
I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing? No. It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death. It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.
|
|
responsibility
life
|
Jean-Paul Sartre |
06207a9
|
It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years. Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life? And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.
|
|
human
spirit
life
old-houses
houses
years
ego
|
Nora Roberts |
45d1f4e
|
Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?
|
|
life
gray-book
white
misery
|
Mary Balogh |
84d88cd
|
"My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot know what the future will bring or how the events of the future will make us feel. We cannot even plan and feel any certainty that our most carefully contrived plans will be put into effect. Could I have predicted what happened to me in the Peninsula? Could you have predicted what happened to you in Cornwall? But those things happened to us nevertheless. And they changed our plans and our dreams so radically that we both might have been excused for giving up, for never planning or dreaming again, for never living again. That too is a choice we all have to make."
|
|
dream
life
|
Mary Balogh |
2cb476e
|
"History doesn't start with a tall building
|
|
sex
shakespeare
magic
rain
poems
romance
sacrifice
death
dreams
music
songs
life
carrack
cityisle
cityspire
desolate
fedora
haunts
horace-walpole
mannequins
phillip-k-dick
puddles
specters
spectre
amnesia
androids
haunting
greek-mythology
waking
damnation
count
emily-dickinson
magick
tempest
apocalypse
reflections
storms
masquerade
empty
science-fiction
gothic
jazz
ships
ghosts
water
piano
|
Nathan Reese Maher |
6f615ac
|
It was Calzas who told me that your life is a road along which you leave many markers - points in time and places on the map. The ones in time you can only revisit in your mind, and they never change. The places can be revisited firsthand, but they're constantly changing. To keep a place the same, he said, you can no longer return to it - and then it becomes a point in time.
|
|
life
nicholas-christopher
|
Nicholas Christopher |
8bb43e1
|
...nobody can protect anybody else from vileness. Or from pain. All you can do is not let it break you in half and keep on going until you get to the other side.
|
|
life
vileness
determination
|
Peter Straub |
4147265
|
Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you.
|
|
enlightenment
writing
success
life
wisdom
elizabeth-gilbert
|
Brandi L. Bates |
fca860d
|
She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.
|
|
joy
quote
living
life
joys
small-joys
like-life
lorrie-moore
complicated
pressure
short-story
realization
quotes
|
Lorrie Moore |
dd21462
|
Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong.
|
|
life
philosophy
judgement
|
Amartya Sen |
8ee5af5
|
And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.
|
|
mankind
want
greed
humanity
learning
life
endeavors
things-that-matter
ladder
materialism
|
H. Rider Haggard |
bd645d2
|
There are things that once done can't be undone, things that once said can't be unsaid.
|
|
present
past
life
reverse
said
the-neighbor
undone
mistakes
|
Lisa Gardner |
b062b13
|
In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
|
|
life
wisdom
gratefulness
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
80e14b1
|
Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.
|
|
life
philosophy
wisdom
|
Joanne Harris |
87fc769
|
I am near fourteen and have never yet seen a hanging. My life is barren.
|
|
death
life
the-more-things-change
hanging
teenagers
lol
|
Karen Cushman |
1e0bdb5
|
Jon Snow: I'm not afraid to die. Mormont: Nor life, I hope.
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|
fear
life
|
George R.R. Martin |
84afe46
|
Living is like being chained at the bottom of a shallow pond with my eyes open and no air. I can see distorted images of happiness and light, even hear muffled laughter, but everything is out of my reach as I lie in suffocating agony. If death is the opposite of living, then I hope death is like floating.
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|
depression
sadness
life
|
Katie McGarry |
baae42c
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Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements but as to their subjective experiences.
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|
life
displacement
importance
experience
|
Thomas Hardy |
3610317
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I am, after all, an adult, a grown man, a useful human being, even though I lost the career that made me all these things. I won't make that mistake again.
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|
loss
life-lessons
life
getting-fired
job-losses
losing-hope
losing-self
employment
careers
learning-from-mistakes
mistake
self-worth
mistakes
failure
human-nature
|
Gillian Flynn |
978b89e
|
I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or silently separated in two.
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|
life
vitality
|
E.L. Doctorow |
c54243c
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Oshche sega stani skala, v koiato v'lnite na zhivota shche se udriat naprazno...
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|
life
|
James Clavell |
5046657
|
So, if people didn't settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea - or actually, we have lots of ideas, but we don't know if any of them are right. According to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.
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|
humor
life
sedentary
|
Bill Bryson |
86340b1
|
...and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.
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|
life
ordinary
|
Bill Bryson |
67b7948
|
A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings - they needed each other even when they appeared hostile, and it was very sweet to be loved by them.
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|
life
love
need
|
Stefan Zweig |
b29bc9f
|
The road to happiness is paved with good deeds for others.
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|
people
goodness
happiness
life
road-to-happiness
purpose
|
Lisa Schroeder |
4ab75d7
|
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness--cry and then walk--but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
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|
loss
life
numbers
logic
math
|
Aimee Bender |
765476b
|
The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It resists finishing, and partly this is because words are not enough; my early world was synaesthesic, and I am haunted by the ghosts of my own sense impressions, which re-emerge when I try to write, and shiver between the lines.
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|
past
life
consciousness
ghosts
|
Hilary Mantel |
9dbfccc
|
This much I do know - I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices and chaotic passions.
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|
women
life
exhaustion
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
87c0667
|
... a knowledge of how to live was a knowledge of how to die.
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|
life
|
Richard Wright |
4e4e062
|
It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings. Alan Bishop
|
|
life
compass
direction
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
261d68a
|
"I've had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered that as a group these awkward half children take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form of play-acting. The adolescent
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|
life
|
David & Leigh Eddings |
4b1fdee
|
Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.
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|
live
life
love
|
Mary Balogh |
676d54c
|
As a general rule, the less one's sense of life fulfillment, the greater one's death anxiety.
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|
life
fulfillment
general
sense
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
7eda08b
|
One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.
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|
relationships
life
love
|
James Salter |
c905926
|
Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn't see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it.
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|
life
realizations
|
Donna Freitas |
6e07d4e
|
I write. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks. As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me. He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't. Four little words.
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|
grief
sorrow
life
|
Sara Zarr |
8e00ad5
|
What I learned is that it's arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.
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|
life
lisa-gardner
quotes
|
Lisa Gardner |
4fb4ce7
|
In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.
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|
marriage
feminism
slavery
history
politics
life
serfdom
eleanor-of-aquitaine
medieval
medieval-history
royalty
oppression
|
Alison Weir |
6b19cf8
|
However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?
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|
religion
science
life
|
Richard Dawkins |
15a05cb
|
When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.
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|
relationships
life
love
|
Iris Murdoch |
4945439
|
If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn't have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life - lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it.
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|
sex
life
marrow
cows
meat
cooking
food
|
Julie Powell |
a2fa3ad
|
You had a near life experience.
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|
life
|
Chuck Palahniuk |
9fb0c53
|
I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words
|
|
words
silence
life
tragedies
speaking
master
silent
talking
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
fdd915e
|
Experience has tutored me well that most will lie or cheat to get the better hand. It's why I prefer solitude to social interaction. - Bethany
|
|
solitude
life
experience
lie
|
Sherrilyn Kenyon |
2cda6ab
|
What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together
|
|
inspiration
life
what-is-normal
what-happened
important
normal
|
Terry Pratchett |
19e02dc
|
A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way.
|
|
life
truth
divided
|
Paulo Coelho |
1a24dd6
|
Much of life is a game. If played skillfully, with an intelligent and fascinating opponent, it can become almost a dance. One challenges and moves, the other teases and skips away, only to dart forward later and strike a telling blow.
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|
life
|
Elizabeth Hoyt |
c50b8df
|
" Poor little old human beings - they're jerked into this world without having any idea where they came from or what it is they are supposed to do, or how long they have to do it in. Or where they are gonna wind up after that. But bless their hearts, most of them wake up every morning and keep on trying to make some sense out of it. Why, you can't help but love them, can you? I just wonder why more of them aren't as crazy as betsy bugs. " Aunt Elner, 1978"
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|
life
human-beings
|
Fannie Flagg |
1cbf06b
|
Most of us are naturally inclined to struggle against the restrictions our friends and family impose upon us, but if we are so unfortunate as to lose a loved one, what a difference then! Then the restriction becomes a sacred trust.
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|
trust
life
inspirational
restriction
losing
|
Susanna Clarke |
3ea14d5
|
...but somehow when it's real, when it's your life... that person can feel even farther off and more unobtainable than an actual celebrity. Proximity doesn't breed familiarity
|
|
life
maureen-johnson
proximity
|
Maureen Johnson |
4a77a3b
|
Life has a way of kicking one along like a football, or so I've found. Fate had never dealt me personally a particularly easy time, but that was OK, that was normal. Most people, it seemed to me, took their turn to be football. Most survived. Some didn't.
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|
life
survival
|
Dick Francis |
f814f25
|
GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current...
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|
metaphor
life
|
Tom Stoppard |
c3c886c
|
Listen! What is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner.
|
|
life
inspirational
|
H. Rider Haggard |
ef0f907
|
Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.
|
|
hopes
nature
life
humiliation
perspective
|
Alain de Botton |
0940a3f
|
You say your life is your own. But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.
|
|
life
importance-of-existence
role
play
|
Agatha Christie |
8cbe568
|
I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to read--books about people and things that matter, books about life and death.
|
|
reading
death
life
characters
|
Will Schwalbe |
656b829
|
Yet she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreathes heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile and inhumane than love; yet it is also absolutely beautiful and necessary.
|
|
relationships
life
love
to-the-lighthouse
modernism
virginia-woolf
|
Virginia Woolf |
d9c35b2
|
Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to me about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead!
|
|
kids
youth
death
life
glare
glares
glaring
money-monetary
plead
buy
pleading
baby
kid
cry
talk
crying
talking
child
children
young
dead
eyes
young-adults
|
V.C. Andrews |
a6d036a
|
The two of them simply weren't attracted to just any attractive, eligible man; they were attracted rarely, but when it happened, it was evidently a life-altering experience.
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|
life
experience
|
Judith McNaught |
179bbfd
|
I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.
|
|
people
goodness
self-awareness
reality
life
|
James Baldwin |
4e4a4fa
|
Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much.
|
|
understanding
past
life
|
Jack Kerouac |
f825618
|
Why does man need bread? To survive. But why survive if it is only to eat more bread? To live is more than just to sustain life - it is to enrich, and be enriched by, life.
|
|
india
life
enriching-life
|
Shashi Tharoor |
8410667
|
It's the end of the world every day, for someone.
|
|
life
|
Margaret Atwood |
fde01e4
|
You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
|
|
living
life
enjoyment
|
Natalie Goldberg |
2675c4f
|
So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, probably.
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|
women
life
|
Marian Keyes |
c28ca94
|
wjwdk fy Hyty ymthl ly kl 'ml wHlm tmnyt tHqyqh , wmhm yHdth ln fy lmstqbl , fsykwn kl ywm ymr `lyn m`an hw '`Zm ywm fy Hytn , wsykwn qlby dy'man mlkan lk
|
|
love-story
life
novel
|
Nicholas Sparks |
19db57b
|
"You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said. "And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death."
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|
death
life
survivor
preservation
|
Frank Herbert |
05a3dd2
|
Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.
|
|
people
life
|
Nick Hornby |
30503c4
|
And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
|
|
past
life
love
wisedom
mistakes
|
Khaled Hosseini |
8b39223
|
The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.
|
|
life
thought-provoking
|
Tom Robbins |
68f0e65
|
We are here to witness. There is nothing else to do with those mute materials we do not need. Until Larry teaches his stone to talk, until God changes his mind, or until the pagan gods slip back to their hilltop groves, all we can do with the whole inhuman array is watch it.
|
|
nature
life
watching
|
Annie Dillard |
426cbca
|
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.
|
|
life
|
Julian Barnes |
4f863a3
|
Interesting how life goes on in spite of itself.
|
|
life
|
Maria V. Snyder |
945d6ed
|
"I have so often been asked the question: "But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?" And my answer has always been: "It was God's will that I should." And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, "In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny."
|
|
writing
destiny
god
life
chain-of-life
the-scarlet-pimpernel
god-s-will
question
|
Emmuska Orczy |
d18258c
|
"It's your duty to use what influence you have, unless you want to drift through life like a fish belly-up on the stream" "I wish I could believe that life really is something more than a stream that carries us along, belly-up" "Alright, if it's a stream, you're still free to be in this part of it or that part, aren't you? The water will divide again and again. If you bump, and tussle, and fight, and make use of whatever advantages you might have-" "Oh, that's fine, I'm sure, when you have advantages." "You'd find them everywhere, if you ever bothered to look!"
|
|
life
stream
|
Arthur Golden |
24b11ec
|
And it was knowing that I could still be ... still be afraid of everyhting, but not letting fear stop me from living
|
|
fear
living
life
|
Jennifer L. Armentrout |
f162cad
|
It was a flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing.
|
|
happy
freedom
inspiration
living
happiness
life
love
inspirational
flying
book
fly
falling
|
Tim O'Brien |
b789e92
|
"She dances a little jig. "This would make one hell of a TV show, huh?" "Yeah. But no one would believe it." I should let it go. But it's like the hole, like the door, and I have to know. Or at least, I have to ask. "Hey, Dulcie, was any of that real?" She finishes her dance and the wings come to rest. "Who's to say what's real or not?" "Yeah, but--my barometer on reality, not so good since I started going crazy. "Yeah, well, who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?"
|
|
people
life
crazy
|
Libba Bray |
2db576b
|
- Niama drugo miasto kato moreto, gospoda. Tezi, koito tsial zhivot izkarvat na sushata, nikoga niama da go razberat. Moreto e p'rvichno, poniakoga e zhestoko, drug p't - nezhno, i nikoga - predskazuemo.
|
|
magic
fantasy
life
българия
bulgaria
riftwar
bulgarian
feist
raymond
амос
война
моряк
разлом
реймънд
фийст
живот
more
saga
master
български
magician
sea
night
|
Raymond E. Feist |
50ff67e
|
She had known the kind of love that was worth risking everything for, the kind of love that was as rare as a glimpse of heaven.
|
|
heaven
risk
faith
hope
life
love
oppurtunity
choices-and-consequences
|
Nicholas Sparks |