|
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 |
|
5d40f74
|
I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that nothing really matters except being alive.
|
|
life
|
Sarah Miller |
|
444fb2c
|
The first rule in life is 'everybody lies.' Remember that and you'll get a lot further.
|
|
cynical
lies
life
lying
rule
rules
|
Jennifer Crusie |
|
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 |
|
3bac8d5
|
Doing nothing sometimes hurts more than doing something. Life doesn't come with a guarantee, which is just as well, because most guarantees are bullshit.
|
|
life
|
Nora Roberts |
|
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 |
|
f0c5c10
|
The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation's getting smartersmarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations beforeout of each new generation's breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals.
|
|
life
|
Philip Roth |
|
4785bd0
|
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe? Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
|
|
faith
life
love
|
Yann Martel |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
bd08a45
|
Tragedies in hindsight look like farces.
|
|
life
tragedy
|
Julian Barnes |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
f916a63
|
Gloria laughed at them and said that she'd overtaken grief a long time ago, that she was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
|
|
life
|
Colum McCann |
|
a7247cb
|
Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness, we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. Until we picture nonentity we underrate the victory of God, and can realize none of the trophies of His ancient war. It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we know nothing until we know nothing.
|
|
existence
life
|
G.K. Chesterton |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
41f2d47
|
Pasmo sempre quando acabo qualquer coisa. Pasmo e desolo-me. O meu instinto de perfeicao deveria inibir-me de acabar; deveria inibir-me ate de dar comeco. Mas distraio-me e faco. O que consigo e um produto, em mim, nao de uma aplicacao de vontade, mas de uma cedencia dela. Comeco porque nao tenho forca para pensar; acabo porque nao tenho alma para suspender. Este livro e a minha cobardia.
|
|
inner-self
life
solitude
|
Fernando Pessoa |
|
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 |
|
3a16c34
|
Only one life, it will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last.
|
|
christ
christian
done
faith
god
jesus
last
life
one
past
soon
|
Elizabeth George |
|
4a0ca11
|
If I were writing a novel I would end it here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I'm beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.
|
|
life
realism
|
Graham Greene |
|
fa9be41
|
At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.
|
|
life
|
Matt Ridley |
|
b779264
|
My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.
|
|
history
life
personhood
women
|
Philippa Gregory |
|
986fdeb
|
Life is a precious possession...It is what one makes of it. - Charity Duncan
|
|
life
love
|
Mary Balogh |
|
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 |
|
cde4f06
|
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
|
|
dying
last-words
life
|
Oliver Sacks |
|
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 |
|
ad36099
|
It was as if each of them sensed vaguely that the Saturday afternoons of youth are few, and precious, and this feeling which neither of them could have defined or described made every moment of this time together too short, too quickly gone, yet clearer and more sharply edged than any other.
|
|
life
moments
saturday
teenage-love
teenagers
youth
youthfulness
|
Grace Metalious |
|
7fd6013
|
I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.
|
|
life
secret
|
Anne Lamott |
|
8d9fb57
|
she hated everything her parents loved
|
|
hate
life
parents
parents-and-children
|
Stephen Chbosky |
|
96c87d6
|
Joy multiples when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.
|
|
life
|
R.A. Salvatore |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
9d3b7c0
|
It is not death that allows us to understand each other, but poetry.
|
|
history
inspirational
life
life-philosophy
love
poetry
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
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 |
|
d4adf34
|
... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.
|
|
ageing
life
|
Julian Barnes |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
6b2527f
|
You do it how you can do it, so long as it's getting done, you're okay.
|
|
inspirational
life
|
Emma Forrest |
|
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 |
|
59565ca
|
There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society.
|
|
children
england
insight
life
society
|
E. Nesbit |
|
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 |
|
a7a30ab
|
An ordinary man can enjoy breakfasting on juice and rye bread. But when you are underfed, scorned, miserable or just plain bored, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little more colourful, exciting, tastier, meatier and juicier.
|
|
animated
cat-haee
cathaee
children-s-books
dark
dark-humor
edward-gorey
enhanced-epub3
general-fiction
graphic-novel
haee
humor
illustrated-books
lessons
life
middlings
pets
quirky
quirky-characters
r-s-vern
series
shel-silverstein
tim-burton
trilogy
young-adults
|
R.S. Vern |
|
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 |
|
e81e7b2
|
l shy ymknh tGyyr nmT lHy@ 'kthr mn njb Tfl
|
|
children
life
novel
|
Nicholas Sparks |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
3fce9c9
|
Is there any place on Earth that smells better than a laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed - comfort food for your nose.
|
|
family
father
happiness
laundromat
life
rain
safety
sunday
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
579313e
|
In India everything has a use and a value.
|
|
life
use
value
|
Tahir Shah |
|
dfb0aa6
|
He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.
|
|
life
|
Milan Kundera |
|
ed603a0
|
those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.
|
|
ignorance
life
possibility
|
Franz Kafka |
|
43e5b18
|
There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.
|
|
life
truth
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
3e3c1d0
|
Above all, staring at my old bedroom ceiling, I feel safe. Cocooned from the world; wrapped up in cotton wool. No one can get me here. No one even knows I'm here. I won't get any nasty letters and I won't get any nasty phone calls and I won't get any nasty visitors. It's like a sanctuary. I feel as if I'm fifteen again, with nothing to worry about but my Homework. (And I haven't even got any of that.)
|
|
life
nostalgia
parent-love-and-protection
parents
|
Sophie Kinsella |
|
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 |
|
a11454c
|
We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble?
|
|
life
mortality
|
H.G. Wells |
|
a043896
|
You don't have to want to be in a relationship for a little bow-chicka-bow-wow.
|
|
life
love
|
Jennifer L. Armentrout |
|
c742774
|
It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it.
|
|
genius
life
trick
truth
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
a781adf
|
For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.
|
|
ender
feelings
genius
life
personality
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
6889189
|
The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game.
|
|
game
genius
life
live
truth
war
world
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
8bde9f7
|
No true love is possible, Lewis demonstrates, until we abandon our claims, our rights, our grievances. Until then we will be trapped in the obscurity of our heart's mixed motives, our will to possess, to control, to be our own gods.
|
|
control
cslewis
life
love
rights
wisdom
|
Michael D. O'Brien |
|
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 |
|
59f9e28
|
As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.
|
|
life
love
sadness
|
Jeannette Walls |
|
f90a27d
|
Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.
|
|
change
christianity
eternity
life
upside-down
|
Randy Alcorn |
|
41fdfe2
|
wlkn knt 'nt l`z wlsrwr ! lHy@ SHr qHl@ mhlk@ w 'nt bh wHdk lwH@ lkhDr lrTyb@ tlwdh bh lnfs
|
|
life
lover
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
8771415
|
lmr'@ hy lHy@, lmwt nfsh ykll bjll@ lHq byn ydyh.
|
|
life
woman
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
f91fa52
|
One must indeed test the strings to this life, bounce the bow, wet the mouthpiece, prepare for the deeper music that follows.
|
|
life
music
|
Mitch Albom |
|
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 |
|
5a0e1ef
|
Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place in the world for it - in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out here in India.
|
|
grief
life
spirituality
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
bb17509
|
"Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, "there is a life that will never have been lived," sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost. The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life. Grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of the living being as living, exposed to non-life from the start."
|
|
life
precariousness
war
|
Judith Butler |
|
8cdd278
|
It's not as if we're running a hospital for sick children down here, let's put it that way. Where's the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I've seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only--if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things--beautiful things--that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?
|
|
care
connect
corrosive
destroy
heart
life
nobility
objects
patch-up
saving
soul
|
Donna Tartt |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
2ddf6e0
|
"According to Melanie Klein, we develop moral responses in reaction to questions of survivability. My wager is that Klein is right about that, even as she thwarts her own insight by insisting that it is the ego's survivability that is finally at issue. Why the ego? After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a "you" or a set of "yous" without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am. If I have a boundary at all, or if a boundary can be said to belong to me, it is only because I have become separated from others, and it is only on condition of this separation that I can relate to them at all. So the boundary is a function of the relation, a brokering of difference, a negotiation in which I am bound to you in my separateness. If I seek to preserve your life, it is not only because I seek to preserve my own, but because who "I" am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. I may lose this "you" and any number of particular others, and I may well survive those losses. But that can happen only if I do not lose the possibility of any "you" at all. If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be."
|
|
boundaries
butler
dissociation
grief
klein
life
loss
morality
otherness
self-preservation
seperation
survival
|
Judith Butler |
|
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 |
|
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.
|
|
ageing
aging
life
midlife-crisis
old
time
|
Philip K. Dick |
|
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 |
|
4b45f5a
|
Mas como era extraordinaria aquela sala cheia de gente -- ou melhor, de animais -, a olhar na mesma direccao, para outros animais mascarados e treinados para representar num palco, para animais cobertos de tecido e bocados de peles, ornamentados com pedras e de rostos e garras pintados. Toda a gente acabara de comer um animal de qualquer especie; as peles que se viam por toda a parte, apesar de a noite estar quente, provinham de animas que tinham vivido, brincado e fornicado em florestas e campos, e os pes de toda a gente estavam cobertos de pele de animais.
|
|
conscience
life
|
Doris Lessing |
|
074a0a6
|
l tbn amlk fy lHy@ `l~ mwt nsn
|
|
hopes
life
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
b91a7ea
|
Is there life before death? That's chalked up In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup, We hug our little destiny again.
|
|
life
poetry
|
Seamus Heaney |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
b7e2f1c
|
But that (physical attractiveness), as the late great Irish poet and philosopher of beauty John O'Donohue helpfully distinguished, is glamour. I've taken his definition as my own, for naming beauty in all its nuance in the moment-to-moment reality of our days:
|
|
art-of-living
beautiful
beauty
enoughness
life
nature
on-being
wisdom
|
Krista Tippett |
|
2c3e91e
|
But how nothingness invades us! We are scarcely born ere decay begins for us, in such a way that the whole of life is but one long combat with it, more and more triumphant, on its part, to the consummation, namely, death; and then the reign of decay is exclusive.
|
|
death
decay
life
nothingness
|
Gustave Flaubert |
|
ef81a01
|
Alexander shifted in my arms. God, he was so small, and from the giddy looks on my father's and Ashley's faces, they already worshiped him. We all started off this way, small little bundles of joy. Me, Aires, Noah, Lila, Isaiah, and even Beth. At some point, someone held and loved us, but somewhere along the way, it all got screwed up.
|
|
life
pushing-the-limits
|
Katie McGarry |
|
a8acc74
|
He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesn't know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed. Feeling his wife's head nesting in the pillow below his shoulder, he is almost certain that they will find ways to manage. They've been learning to get by with less, and they'll keep learning. It seems to him as if they're taking a course in loss lately. And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours: knowing that whatever plenty befalls them together or separately in the future, they will become more and more intimate with loss as the years accumulate, friends dying or slipping away undramatically into the crowded past, memory itself finally flickering and growing treacherous toward the end; knowing that even the children who may be in their future will eventually school them in the pain of growth and separation, as their own parents and mentors die off and leave them alone in the world, shivering at the dark threshold.
|
|
life
novel
|
Jay McInerney |
|
76e4d0c
|
In the end, each of us is alone, but in the meantime, we must all huddle together to give one another comfort and warmth.
|
|
life
|
Sidney Sheldon |
|
f9e8ac9
|
As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.
|
|
dead
life
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
f69b30e
|
... but life would be very miserable indeed were I to spend it in terror of the thing that has not yet happened.
|
|
life
|
Edgar Rice Burroughs |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
442ec4b
|
For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want - but an end?
|
|
existence
life
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
5e52bf1
|
"This was real life, not a book. And in
|
|
fiction
legacy
life
real
someday
|
Danielle Steele |
|
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 |
|
298e98a
|
"If you're a child of God, you do not just "go around once" on Earth. You don't get just one earthly life. You get another-one far better and without end. You'll inhabit the New Earth! You'll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth."
|
|
god
heaven
life
new-earth
|
Randy Alcorn |
|
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 |
|
b55abfa
|
Life was small but good. (15)
|
|
life
simplicity
small
|
Francesca Lia Block |
|
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 |
|
ed9d76a
|
As she made coffee in the kitchen and tried to spoon the frozen ice-cream from its carton without snapping the shaft off the spoon, Elizabeth was struck, not for the first time, by the thought that her life was entirely frivolous. It was a rush and slither of trivial crises; of uncertain cash-flow, small triumphs, occasional sex and too many cigarettes; of missed deadlines that turned out not to matter; of arguments, new clothes, bursts of altruism and sincere resolutions to address the important things. Of all these and the other experiences that made up her life, the most significant aspect was the one suggested by the words 'turned out not to matter'. Although she was happy enough with what she had become, it was this continued sense of the easy, the inessential nature of what she did, that most irritated her. She thought of Tom Brennan, who had known only life or death, then death in life. In her generation there was no intensity.
|
|
life
|
Sebastian Faulks |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
f989f09
|
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.
|
|
chloe-neill
gabriel-keene
life
life-lesson
life-lessons
perseverance
perspective
|
Chloe Neill |
|
1acf1a5
|
You are your own beginning. Every day, every hour, every minute, you start again. There is no point wishing you were someone else, you are who you are--start there.
|
|
change
life
|
A.M. Homes |
|
e7c0afe
|
Us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains.
|
|
humanity
life
|
E.R. Eddison |
|
edd2159
|
One may deal with things without love...but you cannot deal with men without it...It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life.
|
|
life
love
mankind
natural-laws
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
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 |
|
4fcacf7
|
Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument.
|
|
bean
family
life
relationships
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
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 |
|
4d31e8f
|
When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.
|
|
life
meditate
meditation
new-ideas
patience
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
e6cb711
|
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.
|
|
life
mgg
stephen-crane
the-open-boat
trials
waves
|
Stephen Crane |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
5bccd06
|
Each day we live is a glass room Until we break it with the thrusting Of the spirit and pass through The splintered walls to the green pastures Where the birds and buds are breaking Into fabulous song and hue By the still waters. -
|
|
life
spirit
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
ef8d38e
|
Worry denies the power of God and produces no good results. Worry adds no value to your life. Eliminate it with God's help.
|
|
free
god
life
love
power
result
value
worry
|
Elizabeth George |
|
4d82755
|
There are too many fault lines to count now.
|
|
fault-lines
life
love
nicholas-sparks
|
Nicholas Sparks |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
fc9ff91
|
Life is no more than the repeated fulfilling of a permanent desire.
|
|
life
|
Alexandre Dumas |
|
02ebe02
|
Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.
|
|
inspirational
life
moving-forward
|
Jack London |
|
9c2067b
|
In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life.
|
|
death
life
tragedy
|
Sara Gruen |
|
6dd44b6
|
And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four--that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.
|
|
fyodor-dostoyevsky
life
notes-from-underground
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
3641a33
|
... one can't live without falling now and again.
|
|
life
life-lessons
|
Elizabeth Hoyt |
|
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 |
|
878ea62
|
You have to accept gifts occasionally, because there are some things you can't give yourself
|
|
life
|
Michael Marshall Smith |
|
357e9dc
|
You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the story of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
|
|
beautiful
beauty
bourgeois
class
classes
despise
feelings
hatred
horrid
life
love
nasty
passion
refusal
snob
snobbish
snobbishness
thought
thoughts
truth
|
John Fowles |
|
c813c8c
|
Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them
|
|
life
philospohy
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
6041560
|
Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don't care.
|
|
beastly
care
cellar
cellars
decent
filthy
free
life
locked
people
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John Fowles |
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1319d64
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"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."
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feminism
life
tradition
virginia-woolf
woman
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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cea6e8b
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Life...is a wonder. It is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions.
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contradictions
life
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Naguib Mahfouz |
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85d328c
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There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst it's just dick jokes.
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life
pastrix
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |