|
336bad4
|
Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?' ...'Because they were born in the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels.
|
|
dying
inevitability
life
living
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
2d9d85e
|
Survival often demands our courage.
|
|
life
survival
|
David Mitchell |
|
2d56167
|
El misterio de la vida no es problema que hay que resolver, sino una realidad que hay que experimentar.
|
|
dune
existence
existencial
life
realidad
reality
science-fiction
vida
|
Frank Herbert |
|
fe66d87
|
A real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things that can be named.
|
|
humble
life
mercy
|
James Baldwin |
|
1b6d740
|
If he's like any other man I've ever met, it's not my smile he's going to be looking at.
|
|
brad-thor
fiction
humor
life
men
scot-harvath
thriller
|
Brad Thor |
|
ff2875e
|
Nothing is quite so beautiful as when you share it with it with someone else. There is no purpose in working unless one works for someone, for something.
|
|
life
|
Louis L'Amour |
|
1af4461
|
We pimp our precious lives to the infernal gnashing babble - Follow me! Friend me! Like me! But don't ever know me.
|
|
follow
know
knowledge
life
like
social-network
society
|
Patrick Marber |
|
b2506c7
|
Precariousness and precarity are intersecting concepts. Lives are by definition precarious: they can be expunged at will or by accident; their persistence is in no sense guaranteed
|
|
life
precariousness
precarity
|
Judith Butler |
|
8771415
|
lmr'@ hy lHy@, lmwt nfsh ykll bjll@ lHq byn ydyh.
|
|
life
woman
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
7e28141
|
There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.
|
|
life
vindictive
world
|
Stefan Zweig |
|
77c5881
|
A compliment about one's nature is more important because a person has to choose how to behave, whilst a compliment about one's appearance doesn't mean overly much because there is no choice involved there.
|
|
character
life
truth
|
Julie Garwood |
|
286bfb2
|
"If life were a movie, we'd have had what they call a "meet cute"."
|
|
life
love
meet-cute
|
James Patterson |
|
8932a6b
|
I wish life was like banking,' I said. 'I don't mean it's straightforward. Some of it's incredibly complicated. But you can understand it in the end, if you try hard enough. Or there's someone, somewhere, who understands it, even if only afterwards, after it's too late. The trouble with life, it seems to me, is that it can turn out to be too late and you still haven't understood it.
|
|
life
|
Julian Barnes |
|
6bb3ea1
|
The Source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's still burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay there, in that shine within yourself, that new place for the light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
|
|
life
love
luminescence
mumbai
night
shantaram
stars
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
6b2527f
|
You do it how you can do it, so long as it's getting done, you're okay.
|
|
inspirational
life
|
Emma Forrest |
|
b9f7a66
|
Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.
|
|
history
life
literature
time
|
Julian Barnes |
|
ba2547d
|
Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.
|
|
life
|
Harlan Coben |
|
bb2fc86
|
I have no emotions. I just stand there, in the rubble of my life. This... this was my home. If it were a person, this would be a gaping chest wound, the kind no one can recover from.
|
|
feelings
home
life
rubble
wounds
|
Beth Revis |
|
6984399
|
"Pa said, "Won't you say a few words? Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." Connie led Rose of Sharon to the graveside, she reluctant. "You got to," Connie said. "It ain't decent not to. It'll jus' be a little. The firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes.All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people. Casy said, It'll be a short one." He bowed his head, and the others followed his lead. Casy said solemnly, "This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an' he says 'All that lives is holy.' Got to thinkin', an' purty soon it means more than the words says. An' I woundn' pray for a ol' fella that's dead. He's awright. He got a job to do, but it's all laid out for'im an' there's on'y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an' they's a thousan' ways, an' we don' know which one to take. An' if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks that don' know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An' now cover 'im up and let'im get to his work." He raised his head."
|
|
death
funeral
last-words
life
|
John Steinbeck |
|
6043a40
|
The woman who later became his wife was sleeping in his bed, her face buried in the pillows and her feet crossed on top of each other like a child's. He watched her sleep and struggled to see her as she was, but what he saw instead were her muscles and bones. He saw right through the skin to where her femur connected to her tibia by way of the ligaments, to the hair web of nerves and the delicate forest of her lungs, to the abstract heart pumping blood through her arteries. It terrified him how easily these systems could fail her.
|
|
death
life
|
Nicole Krauss |
|
bd08a45
|
Tragedies in hindsight look like farces.
|
|
life
tragedy
|
Julian Barnes |
|
e658818
|
What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one's glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity, a fearlessness of growth, of search, of looking, that enlarges the private and the public world. And yet, in our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins
|
|
courage
existence
growth
life
narrow-mindedness
open-mindedness
perspective
society
|
Alice Walker |
|
e81e7b2
|
l shy ymknh tGyyr nmT lHy@ 'kthr mn njb Tfl
|
|
children
life
novel
|
Nicholas Sparks |
|
4c8d46b
|
"That's a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their right mind would point at this thing and say, 'I'm going to fly in my Model-A1'.
|
|
amnesia
androids
apocalypse
carrack
cityisle
cityspire
count
damnation
death
desolate
dreams
emily-dickinson
empty
fedora
ghosts
gothic
greek-mythology
haunting
haunts
horace-walpole
jazz
life
magic
magick
mannequins
masquerade
music
phillip-k-dick
piano
poems
puddles
rain
reflections
romance
sacrifice
science-fiction
sex
shakespeare
ships
songs
specters
spectre
storms
tempest
waking
water
|
Nathan Reese Maher |
|
4c555ad
|
Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.
|
|
evil
good
john-galt
life
man
mind
morality
morals
objectivism
philosophy
pursuit-of-happiness
rational
reason
think
thinking
truth
values
virtue
wisdom
|
Ayn Rand |
|
4c4a6c6
|
You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn't get it. And they are all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat shit. Because when you look in the mirror, it is all that you see.
|
|
feelings
life
|
Heather O'Neill |
|
385f872
|
Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By most astounding stroke of luck and infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist. For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you do with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulations. Well done. You really are special.
|
|
inspirational
life
living
|
Bill Bryson |
|
ed603a0
|
those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.
|
|
ignorance
life
possibility
|
Franz Kafka |
|
320ac14
|
There's no comfort, it seems, in the world of objects.
|
|
alienation
life
melancholy
|
Michael Cunningham |
|
7fd6013
|
I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.
|
|
life
secret
|
Anne Lamott |
|
9c3138d
|
"Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don't know where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday? In the invisible city? Inside me?
|
|
life
melancholy
poetry
|
Roger Zelazny |
|
021f2a2
|
En los momentos mas terribles de la vida solemos caer en una suerte de irresponsabilidad protectora y en vez de pensar en lo que nos ocurre dirigimos la atencion a trivialidades.
|
|
irresponsibility
life
procrastination
trauma
|
Adolfo Bioy Casares |
|
0b8dadb
|
"Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?" I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all," I said, "but sometimes I have hope." I rather think," she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position." I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us. When I die," she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me."
|
|
life
mortality
nature
|
Sena Jeter Naslund |
|
10822cb
|
"The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide"s reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the Page | 49 . state which paid the coroner? And then, since you had been declared temporarily mad, your reasons for killing yourself were also assumed to be mad. So I doubt anyone paid much attention to Adrian"s argument, with its references to philosophers ancient and modern, about the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you."
|
|
law
life
society
society-individualism
suicide
|
Julian Barnes |
|
1563b75
|
Here some one thrust these cards into these old hands of mine, swears that I must play them, and no others. And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right, live in the game, and die in it.
|
|
game-theory
hunts
life
|
Herman Melville |
|
182e490
|
One day you discover you are alive. Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight! You laugh, you dance around, you shout. But, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an August noon.
|
|
death
life
summer
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
1d6ef57
|
The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.
|
|
jeffrey-archer
life
popularity
sons-of-fortune
|
Jeffrey Archer |
|
1deb541
|
Your life is like a mosaic, a puzzle. You have to figure out where the pieces go and put them together for yourself.
|
|
inspirational
life
|
Maria Shriver |
|
2305011
|
It wasn't the big decisions that set the course of one's life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones.
|
|
life
path-of-life
|
Lauren Willig |
|
2622396
|
"The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me."
|
|
life
|
Richard Ford |
|
27b8bfd
|
Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.
|
|
life
parenthood
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
280c6fa
|
One of my pet peeves was when an adult imagined they had to encapsulate Life for you, hand you Life in a jar, in an eyedropper, in a penguin paperweight full of snow-A Collector's Dream.
|
|
life
life-lessons
patronizing
pet-peeves
teenagers
|
Marisha Pessl |
|
3763e7a
|
He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life.
|
|
balance
human-life
ignorance
life
lust
the-wheel-of-things
|
Rudyard Kipling |
|
378b4d5
|
To deal with history [life] means to abandon one's self to chaos but to retain a belief in the ordination and the meaning. It is a very serious task.
|
|
history
life
meaning
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
3b9f197
|
I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink (...) That was a very different thing from wanting to die.
|
|
freedom
life
wild
wilderness
|
Jon Krakauer |
|
537a863
|
We all do what we do.
|
|
life
mgg
ray-bradbury
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
5d40f74
|
I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that nothing really matters except being alive.
|
|
life
|
Sarah Miller |
|
5f8c42d
|
After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it.
|
|
battle-of-the-sexes
don-quixote
dorothea
humor
life
love
lust
pleasure
sex
truth
|
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
|
61a552d
|
...and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.
|
|
life
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
650da9d
|
Don't suggest that we are growing old, my Lord. We have only bloomed; and a very nice bouquet we make with our buds about us,' answered Mrs. Amy, shaking out the folds of her rosy muslin with much the air of dainty satisfaction the girl used to show in a new dress. Not to mention our thorns and dead leaves,' added Jo, with a sigh; for life had never been very easy to her, and even now she had her troubles both within and without.
|
|
life
louisa-may-alcott
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
897bf6f
|
What determines each person's state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.
|
|
inspiration
life
philosophy
zen
zen-and-the-art-of-happiness
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
8d9fb57
|
she hated everything her parents loved
|
|
hate
life
parents
parents-and-children
|
Stephen Chbosky |
|
8e35188
|
"We've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less. We've even grown so unaccustomed that at times we feel a sort of loathing for real "living life," and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it. For we've reached a point where we regard real "living life" almost as a labor, almost as a service, and we all agree in ourselves that it's better from a book."
|
|
life
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
9512b82
|
Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Sunday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books...books..books.
|
|
flowers
library
life
passion
|
Betty Smith |
|
97ae343
|
"I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." *Fantine"
|
|
life
misery
musical
|
Victor Hugo |
|
9c425e3
|
Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
|
|
evil
good
john-galt
life
man
mind
morality
morals
objectivism
philosophy
pursuit-of-happiness
reason
think
thinking
values
virtue
|
Ayn Rand |
|
9dafa6b
|
Onzi, shcho biaga ot uchastta si, mozhe niakoi den da otkrie, che samo e izbral po-priaka p'teka.
|
|
inspirational
journey
life
path
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
|
a781adf
|
For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.
|
|
ender
feelings
genius
life
personality
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
a8c177a
|
One day the enemy will cross the Great Green. They will bring war and tragedy to these eastern lands. Such is the nature of vile men. Yet we cannot live in dread of them. We cannot hide behind these high walls, our hearts trembling. For that is not life. We must accept the needs and the duties of each day, and face them one at a time.
|
|
life
war
|
David Gemmell |
|
afba38e
|
It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all; Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.
|
|
life
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
b20838b
|
"The meaning of life in western secular society is to be successful. So many people are success mad and they are encouraged to reach for something and have so called "worthwhile goals". Money, fame, power, good looks, possessions are the indicators of success and the media and advertising companies exploit this. People are conditioned to believe that they can only feel happy or good about themselves if they have these things. This of course is not true."
|
|
companies
conditioned
conditioning
deceit
fame
goals
good
happiness
indicators
is
lies
life
looks
meaning
media
money
of
possessions
power
secular
society
success
successful
truth
western
what
|
Tim Crawshaw |
|
c2baa1a
|
"But, Mameha-san, I don't want kindness!" "Don't you? I thought we all wanted kindness. Perhaps what you mean is that you want something more than kindness. And that is something you're in no position to ask."
|
|
kindness
life
love
|
Arthur Golden |
|
c384a57
|
Who's to say? Life is not, as we are taught, a matter of seeking answers, but rather learning which are the questions we should ask.
|
|
life
questions
|
Kate Mosse |
|
c7ae766
|
"The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it. "What do you want?' it repeated. He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not. 'Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you. Why?' 'I wanted to meet you,' he said, without looking around. 'I want to live for ever.' His voice cracked as he said it. He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life. The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several long seconds to recognise it as laughter. 'This is not life,' said the voice. It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard."
|
|
life
vampires
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
caa5d08
|
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
|
|
life
religion
truth
|
E.M. Forster |
|
ccbebd0
|
No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind--because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life.
|
|
dagny-taggart
life
|
Ayn Rand |
|
cde4f06
|
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
|
|
dying
last-words
life
|
Oliver Sacks |
|
ce95a04
|
Our souls are but leaves in a storm, and only the gods know where we will come to rest.
|
|
fait
gods
life
people
prophecy
|
David Gemmell |
|
d4aa10e
|
Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking--that the mind is one's only judge of values and one's only guide of action--that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise--that a concession to the irrational invalidates one's consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality--that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind--that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one's consciousness.
|
|
evil
good
happiness
john-galt
life
man
mind
morality
morals
objectivism
pain
philosophy
pursuit-of-happiness
rational
reason
think
thinking
truth
values
virtue
wisdom
|
Ayn Rand |
|
d4adf34
|
... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.
|
|
ageing
life
|
Julian Barnes |
|
d55c635
|
If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.
|
|
goodness
history
life
passion
past
|
Elizabeth Kostova |
|
d74f07b
|
People want us, or want us dead, because of what we are, not who we are. It's hard.
|
|
final
james
james-patterson
lessons-of-life
life
maximum
patterson
reality
reality-sucks
ride
the
warning
|
James Patterson |
|
d7a93ba
|
Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about. Bringing the world to the window.
|
|
fight
inspiration
life
understanding-life
|
Markus Zusak |
|
dbf5abf
|
Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and panama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried because formulas do not work out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more.
|
|
life
men
restless
security-fear
|
John Steinbeck |
|
dd781c8
|
Believe me, once you have tasted worship--the kind of worship that captures your heart and rivets your full attention on the living Lord--nothing less satisfies. Nothing else even comes close. Once you have tasted true worship, you will never want to play church again.
|
|
life
religion
|
Charles R. Swindoll |
|
df42bcb
|
"My dear Mrs Casaubon," said Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardour, "character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do." "Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea."
|
|
life
positive-thinking
|
George Eliot |
|
dfb0aa6
|
He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.
|
|
life
|
Milan Kundera |
|
d029336
|
He was out to get back everything he'd lost; there was no end to his loss; this thing would drag on forever.
|
|
forever
life
loss
|
Jack Kerouac |
|
af0bbbe
|
Always remember that the tales of another are never as wondrous as your own.
|
|
life
life-experience
|
Michael J. Sullivan |
|
28451ce
|
Nothing in life was as ugly as death.
|
|
life
|
Graham Greene |
|
d237c3b
|
Not so bad this ending because one is getting used to endings: life like Morse, a series of dots and dashes, never forming a paragraph.
|
|
goodbyes
life
vignettes
|
Graham Greene |
|
09ed7d0
|
When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him...It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward...Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time...the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.
|
|
life
meaningful-life
simple
simplicity
work
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
27463b5
|
Tom's theory of why human beings had yet to receive any message from extraterrestrial intelligences was that all civilizations, without exception, blew themselves up almost as soon as they were able to get a message out, never lasting more than a few decades in a galaxy whose age was billions; blinking in and out of existence so fast that, even if the galaxy abounded with earthlike planets, the chances of one civilization sticking around to get a message from another were vanishingly low, because it was too damned easy to split the atom.
|
|
life
life-lesson
science
spiritual-insights
war
|
Jonathan Franzen |
|
09f6c0e
|
At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering.
|
|
life
meaning
meaning-of-life
|
Richard Wright |
|
d3201a9
|
And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?' She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. 'Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years, calculated by old time, of course. But yes, everyone takes the option, sooner or later.' 'So it's just like the first time round? You always die in the end?' 'Yes, except don't forget the quality of life here is much better. People die when they decide they've had enough, not before. The second time round it's altogether more satisfying because it's willed.' She paused, then added, 'As I say, we cater for what people want.' I hadn't been blaming her. I'm not that sort. I just wanted to find out how the system worked. 'So ... even people, religious people, who come here to worship God throughout eternity ... they end up throwing in the towel after a few years, hundred years, thousand years?' 'Certainly. As I said, there are still a few Old Heaveners around, but their numbers are diminishing all the time.
|
|
life
|
Julian Barnes |
|
d34484e
|
Shout to the top!
|
|
cheer
fun
happy
joy
life
protest
shout
voice
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
cea6e8b
|
Life...is a wonder. It is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions.
|
|
contradictions
life
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
c0580ff
|
Every time you try to block a thought out of your mind, you drive it deeper into your memory. By resisting it, you actually reinforce it.
|
|
inspirational
life
subconscious
|
Rick Warren |
|
371f21d
|
I wondered If things that might seem frightening could lose their hold over you. I wondered If we find the people we need when we need them. I wondered If we attract our future by some sort of invisible force, or If we are drawn to it by a similar force. I felt I was turning a corner and that change was afoot.
|
|
invisible
life
questions-in-life
unexpected
|
Sharon Creech |
|
038ce3f
|
When you mess something up, you learn for the next time.
|
|
life
life-and-living
|
Ned Vizzini |
|
2247d92
|
A woman who walks away from the promise of power finds the strength to forgive - and saves her friendship, her marriage, and her sanity. The world is turned upside down.
|
|
difficult-decisions
forgiveness
life
power
powerful-women
strength
wisdom
women
women-in-power
|
Malcolm Gladwell |
|
0e47edd
|
She couldn't believe how quickly life could change. How could she have known when she'd woken up that morning that today was the day she'd fall in love?
|
|
life
love
|
Cecily von Ziegesar |
|
0e60048
|
I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.
|
|
invention
life
loneliness
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
1f51588
|
"Alex here. (...) Ron, I really enjoy all the help you have given me and the times we spent together. I hope that you will not be too depressed by our parting. It may be a very long time before we see each other again. But providing that I get through the Alaskan Deal in one piece you will be hearing form me again in the future. I'd like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing or been to hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one piece of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. (...) Once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. (...) Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. (...) You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. Ron, I really hope that as soon as you can you will get out of Salton City, put a little camper on the back of your pickup, and start seeing some of the great work that God has done here in the American West. you will see things and meet people and there is much to learn from them. And you must do it economy style, no motels, do your own cooking, as a general rule spend as little as possible and you will enjoy it much more immensely. I hope that the next time I see you, you will be a new man with a vast array of new adventures and experiences behind you. Don't hesitate or allow yourself to make excuses. Just get out and do it. Just get out and do it. You will be very, very glad that you did.
|
|
changes
courage
inspirational
into-the-wild
joy
life
nature
new-experiences
|
Jon Krakauer |
|
0eac78e
|
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon, too soon--before life itself.
|
|
disillusionment
life
youth
|
Joseph Conrad |
|
9258267
|
It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false.
|
|
human-nature
inspiration
life
morality
philosophy
psychology
societal-expectations
society
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
0fd4aca
|
My life had gone to bits and I was so unrecognizable to myself that I probably couldn't have picked me out of a police lineup.
|
|
life
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
02ebe02
|
Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.
|
|
inspirational
life
moving-forward
|
Jack London |
|
dbee3cb
|
Cos'e quella sensazione che si prova quando ci si allontana in macchina dalle persone e le si vede recedere nella pianura fino a diventare macchioline e disperdersi? E il mondo troppo grande che ci sovrasta, e l'Addio. Ma intanto, ci si proietta in avanti verso una nuova, folle avventura sotto il cielo.
|
|
life
people
travelling
|
Jack Kerouac |
|
9c2067b
|
In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life.
|
|
death
life
tragedy
|
Sara Gruen |
|
9bc9c26
|
Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever.
|
|
condition
existence
life
misleading
passion
|
Julian Barnes |
|
1319d64
|
"But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant? You'll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I love children, but what if I don't have any? What kind of person does that make me? Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where "all is correct." But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course." Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous."
|
|
feminism
life
tradition
virginia-woolf
woman
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
3114d80
|
Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life--a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple--the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last--it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first, with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer--there it is.
|
|
death
life
philosophy
transience
|
Donna Tartt |
|
2b518fb
|
If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man -- and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages -- it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
|
|
cost
housing
life
|
Henry David Thoreau |
|
1323b6f
|
Ne, ne vienas zmogus ilgai negaletu pakelti tokio liepsningo gyvenimo. <...> Niekas negaletu taip ilgai diena nakti deginti visus savo ziburius, eikvoti visus savo vulkanus, niekas neistengtu taip ilgai diena nakti stoveti liepsnose, kasdien daug valandu su ikaitusia galva mastyti, nuolatos megaudamasis, nuolatos kurdamas, nuolatos sviesus, su budriais jausmais ir nervais nelyginant pilis, uz kurios langu kasdien skamba muzika, o naktimis tviska tukstanciai zvakiu.
|
|
life
lithuanian
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
df4e433
|
"The first of 'Goose's Two Laws of Survival.' It runs thus, 'The weak are meat the strong do eat.' " ... Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. "The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That's it."
|
|
humorous
life
|
David Mitchell |
|
0048b43
|
Life is both a particle and a wave, Lacey taught me, and also it's neither. But only when no one is watching. Once you measure it, it has to choose. It was the act of witnessing that turned nothing into something, collapsed possibility clouds into concrete and irrevocable truth. I'd only pretended to understand before, but I understood now: When no one was watching, I was a cloud. I was all possibilities.
|
|
definition
life
particle
wave
|
Robin Wasserman |
|
cf99bdf
|
"...All who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. All, save you. For you would not have death. You lost death, you lost life, in order to save yourself. Yourself! Your immortal self! What is it? Who are you?" "I am myself. My body will not decay and die-" "A living body suffers pain, Cob; a living body grows old; it dies. Death is the price we pay for our life and for all life." "I do not pay it! I can die and in that moment live again! I cannot be killed; I am immortal. I alone am myself forever!" "Who are you, then?" "The Immortal One." "Say your name." "The King." "Say my name. I told it to you but a minute since. Say my name!" "You are not real. You have no name. Only I exist." "You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw your world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness."
|
|
earthsea
heaven
life
self
the-farthest-shore
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
8caf5de
|
I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away.
|
|
giovanni-s-room
goodbye
inner-turmoil
james-baldwin
leave-taking
life
sad
separation
|
James Baldwin |
|
0221c6b
|
These days every morning begins like a joke you think you have heard before, but there is no one telling it whom you can stop. One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar, then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon, then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar. Each one takes up an entire day. The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West is pulling on the world; on the drive to work cars are swinging comically from lane to lane. The houses and lawns belong in cartoons. The hours collapse into one another's arms. The stories arc over noon and descend like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening. You wish you could stop listening and get serious. Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line which never arrives till very late at night, just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp, just before you begin laughing in the dark.
|
|
life
life-and-living
|
Billy Collins |
|
3c0330f
|
"Sweet Pocket, you mustn't ask about my life before I came here. What I am now, I have always been, and everything I am is here with you." "Sweet Thalia," said I. "That is a fiery flagon of dragon toss."
|
|
future
humor
life
past
|
Christopher Moore |
|
89f67a0
|
That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier...
|
|
beauty
game
life
nature
pretty
prison
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
946e723
|
If you are surrounded by people who not only don't believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.
|
|
life
philosophy
zen
zen-and-the-art-of-happiness
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
0127538
|
Si percibo en otra persona nada mas que lo superficial, percibo principalmente las diferencias, lo que nos separa. Si penetro hasta el nucleo, percibo nuestra identidad, el hecho de nuestra hermandad.
|
|
humanity
life
love
peace
|
Erich Fromm |
|
c4191d1
|
If you life is an example of glorifying God, others won't see your good works and glorify YOU, because they'll know what you are doing is for God's glory.
|
|
glorifying-god
god
life
wake-up
|
Charles R. Swindoll |
|
074a0a6
|
l tbn amlk fy lHy@ `l~ mwt nsn
|
|
hopes
life
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
29d2c62
|
One of the juiciest pleasures of life is to be able to salute and embrace, as elected leaders and honored representatives, people whom you first met when they were on the run or in exile or (like Adam) in and out of jail. I was to have this experience again, and I hope to have it many more times in the future: it sometimes allows me to feel that life is full of point.
|
|
dissent
life
politics
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
c6c245f
|
One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness.
|
|
holiness
laughter
life
secret
tribe
|
Anne Lamott |
|
08050fc
|
By the time I visited those battlefields, I knew that they had been retrofitted as the staging ground for a great deception, and this was my only security, because they could no longer insult me by lying to me. I knew--and the most important thing I knew was that, somewhere deep with them, they knew too. I like to think that knowing might have kept me from endangering you, that having understood and acknowledged the anger, I could control it. I like to think that it could have allowed me to speak the needed words to the woman and then walk away. I like to think this, but I can't promise it. The struggle is really all I have for you because it is the only portion of this world under your control.
|
|
blacks
life
race-relations
racism
struggle
whites
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
|
ca791d2
|
Each person leaves a legacy -- a single, small piece of herself, which makes richer each individual life and the collective life of humanity as a whole.
|
|
humanity
legacy
life
|
John Nichols |
|
63ba007
|
"But we who remain shall grow old We shall know the cold Of cheerless Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces, And mirrors showing stained and aging faces, And the long ranges of comfortless years And the long gamut of human fears... But, for you, it shall forever be spring, And only you shall be forever fearless, And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs, And only you, where the water-lily swims Shall walk along the pathways thro' the willows Of your west. You who went West, and only you on silvery twilight pillows Shall take your rest
|
|
death
dying
forever
life
sad
war
youth
|
Ford Madox Ford (Ford Madox Hueffer ) |
|
99fdc23
|
We have talked about Suzy and about her last days, but it's as if our lives stopped then and there. If I say anything to him about feeling lonesome, he goes outside and does some little chore. I can't tell if he is secretly blaming me, or himself, or just too full of pain to talk. That was the one thing we could always do together. I wish for the old days. I wish for the struggling days and the days of Geronimo, and the days of birthing Charlie with no one but Jack to help me. How happy and in love we were then. I want to be in love again, but all I feel is darkness and shadows. Everything is changed and different
|
|
death
depression
life
loneliness
marriage
sadness
|
Nancy E. Turner |
|
c559e75
|
I resemble that worm which crawls through dust, Lives in the dust, eats dust Until a passerby's foot crushes it.
|
|
life
|
Philip K. Dick |
|
ab55565
|
Now it was done. He was free of Xanth forever. Free to make his own life, without being ridiculed or mothered or tempted. Free to be himself. Bink put his face in his hands and cried.
|
|
freedom
life
|
Piers Anthony |
|
b55abfa
|
Life was small but good. (15)
|
|
life
simplicity
small
|
Francesca Lia Block |
|
8fcf453
|
These people all fling themselves at me. Because I am uneasy and sad they all fling themselves at me larger than life. But I can put my arm up to avoid the impact and they slide gently to the ground. Individualists, completely wrapped up in themselves, thank God. It's the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun - that's the person you've got to be wary of.
|
|
extrovert
fun
individualist
life
people
sad
uneasy
wary
|
Jean Rhys |
|
9171e34
|
STONE Let my heart turn to stone. Maybe then I can sleep without nightmares. May be then I can eat without a stomachache. Maybe then I can read without fear of an unhappy ending. Take the knife out of my heart and,please, let it turn to stone.
|
|
heart
life
nightmares
poetry
stone
unhappy-endings
|
Lisa Schroeder |
|
c0f936b
|
Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn't looking.
|
|
life
neil-gaiman
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
b557118
|
"I used to have pink hair," I told Seven. "I used to have a real job," he answered. "What happened?" He shrugged. "I dyed my hair pink. What happened to you?"
|
|
life
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
c733ada
|
"Again, all of life presents us with two basic ways to treat events. We can either label them "god for us" or "bad for us." The event is only an event. It's how we treat the event that determines what it becomes in our lives. The event doesn't make that determination- we do."
|
|
depression
happiness
life
philosophy
zen
zen-and-the-art-of-happiness
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
c638206
|
Your ultimate goal for marriage is that both of you--as husband and wife--commit to keep growing spiritually.
|
|
christian
faithfulness
goal
god
grow
husband
life
love
marriage
married
spiritual
ultimate
wife
|
Elizabeth George |
|
c3f86bc
|
It isn't fair, but maybe that's the whole point. Fairness has no part in real life, and she took that lesson away from the Hotel Angeline with her.
|
|
fairness
life
life-lessons
mystery
|
Susan Wiggs |
|
a4a6e28
|
The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.
|
|
life
what-happens-to-you
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
96c9103
|
He was thankful not to have to believe in God, for then such a condition of things would be intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only because it was meaningless.
|
|
life
religion
|
W. Somerset Maugham |
|
fc9ff91
|
Life is no more than the repeated fulfilling of a permanent desire.
|
|
life
|
Alexandre Dumas |
|
c7ef9e4
|
I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling. Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as every stepped, getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about it.
|
|
life
|
P.G. Wodehouse |
|
2da0e11
|
Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed ... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.
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ageing
aging
life
midlife-crisis
old
time
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Philip K. Dick |
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96f3dbd
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...some events in life would remain beyond my ability to control or manage them. Some events would just happen.
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life
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Joan Didion |
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c813c8c
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Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them
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life
philospohy
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Gregory David Roberts |
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66df5db
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Wisdom is the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to handle life with rare stability.
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christian
faith
god
joy
life
love
objectivity
peace
point-of-view
see
stability
stable
view
wisdom
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Elizabeth George |
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f69b30e
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... but life would be very miserable indeed were I to spend it in terror of the thing that has not yet happened.
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life
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Edgar Rice Burroughs |
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f989f09
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There are those among us who have erred, deeply and significantly. Who have wounded the world and broken themselves. The worst of them lose themselves in their errors. The best of them crawl back, one foot at a time, and seek to amend their breaches. That is the way of the brave.
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chloe-neill
gabriel-keene
life
life-lesson
life-lessons
perseverance
perspective
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Chloe Neill |
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6759640
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I've been alive a long time, long enough to know that the more baggage you carry in life, the more unstable you'll be, until eventually you get sick of carrying it, and then you just fall down.
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baggage
fall
grief
life
mental-illness
mourn
mourning
unstable
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Rebecca McNutt |
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442ec4b
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For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want - but an end?
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existence
life
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Isaac Asimov |