|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
fa9be41
|
At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.
|
|
life
|
Matt Ridley |
|
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 |
|
6b2527f
|
You do it how you can do it, so long as it's getting done, you're okay.
|
|
inspirational
life
|
Emma Forrest |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
3cf9aef
|
- i have done things i am not proud of, things that brought shame onto my house and my father's name.. but to kill your own sire? how could any man do that? - give me a crossbow and pull down your breeches, and i'll show you. gladly. - you think this is a jape? - i think life is a jape. yours, mine, everyone's.
|
|
life
tyrion
|
George R.R. Martin |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
579313e
|
In India everything has a use and a value.
|
|
life
use
value
|
Tahir Shah |
|
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 |
|
a514c2b
|
Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
|
|
consciousness
existence
john-galt
life
man
mind
morality
morals
objectivism
philosophy
pursuit-of-happiness
rational
reason
think
thinking
truth
values
virtue
wisdom
|
Ayn Rand |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
61a552d
|
...and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.
|
|
life
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
8d9fb57
|
she hated everything her parents loved
|
|
hate
life
parents
parents-and-children
|
Stephen Chbosky |
|
7fd6013
|
I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.
|
|
life
secret
|
Anne Lamott |
|
f2a9b73
|
Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?
|
|
life
|
Joseph Conrad |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
3fd11af
|
Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.
|
|
life
|
Jim Butcher |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
286bfb2
|
"If life were a movie, we'd have had what they call a "meet cute"."
|
|
life
love
meet-cute
|
James Patterson |
|
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 |
|
96c87d6
|
Joy multiples when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.
|
|
life
|
R.A. Salvatore |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
537a863
|
We all do what we do.
|
|
life
mgg
ray-bradbury
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
2d9d85e
|
Survival often demands our courage.
|
|
life
survival
|
David Mitchell |
|
1d6ef57
|
The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.
|
|
jeffrey-archer
life
popularity
sons-of-fortune
|
Jeffrey Archer |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
5d40f74
|
I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that nothing really matters except being alive.
|
|
life
|
Sarah Miller |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
bd08a45
|
Tragedies in hindsight look like farces.
|
|
life
tragedy
|
Julian Barnes |
|
96fd4c2
|
Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it's bad.
|
|
book
characters
crime
depth
ethics
evil
good
life
literary
lonely
misunderstood
novel
sad
spooky
truth
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
9c55337
|
Everything has a past, a voice, existed at some point, even things as small and seemingly meaningless as a house in a huge suburb. It's a house like every other house... but at some point a family lived there, made it theirs, made it important. When people forget that history, that somebody at some point thought the house mattered, it just becomes an empty pile of nailed wood and brick and concrete that gets torn down for some strip mall or chain store to take its place... and that's what happens more and more now, everything is disposable, always replaced with no thought at all. That's where things get lost, memories get lost, humanity slips through the cracks, because when we all fail to pay attention to the things that make up our lives, we're no longer human at all, not really.
|
|
earth
family
hope
human
life
material
together
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
9e7b41f
|
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are -- until the poem -- nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
|
|
hope
life
|
Audre Lorde |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
986fdeb
|
Life is a precious possession...It is what one makes of it. - Charity Duncan
|
|
life
love
|
Mary Balogh |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
b55abfa
|
Life was small but good. (15)
|
|
life
simplicity
small
|
Francesca Lia Block |
|
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
|
John Fowles |
|
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 |
|
28451ce
|
Nothing in life was as ugly as death.
|
|
life
|
Graham Greene |
|
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 |
|
3641a33
|
... one can't live without falling now and again.
|
|
life
life-lessons
|
Elizabeth Hoyt |
|
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 ) |
|
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 |
|
2e61010
|
"Life is more than great sex and a nice car." "Well, yeah. But not a lot more."
|
|
cars
life
meaning-of-life
sex
|
Jennifer Crusie |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
598dc10
|
I lived through those books, songs, television shows, and movies - the way the characters talked, looked, acted. I thought that could translate over into reality, that I could make their world my world. I wanted so badly to run away from my life. But you can't bury yourself in other people's pages and scenes. You aren't David Copperfield or Tom Sawyer. Those love songs on the radio might speak to you, but they're not about you or the person you pine for. Life is not a John Hughes film.
|
|
life
movies
novels
tv-shows
|
Jason Diamond |
|
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 |
|
7235232
|
Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.
|
|
life
literature
philosophy
writing
|
Ernest Hemingway |
|
02ebe02
|
Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.
|
|
inspirational
life
moving-forward
|
Jack London |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
9c2067b
|
In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life.
|
|
death
life
tragedy
|
Sara Gruen |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
85d328c
|
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.
|
|
life
pastrix
|
Nadia Bolz-Weber |
|
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 |
|
5e52bf1
|
"This was real life, not a book. And in
|
|
fiction
legacy
life
real
someday
|
Danielle Steele |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
96f3dbd
|
...some events in life would remain beyond my ability to control or manage them. Some events would just happen.
|
|
life
|
Joan Didion |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
038ce3f
|
When you mess something up, you learn for the next time.
|
|
life
life-and-living
|
Ned Vizzini |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
f2aeabf
|
Proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.
|
|
life
|
Tim O'Brien |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
442ec4b
|
For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want - but an end?
|
|
existence
life
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
fee0a2d
|
Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting--that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art--and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort.
|
|
book
creativity
curiosity
inspirational
joy
life
painting
strangers
writer
writers-on-writing
writing
writing-life
|
Yann Martel |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
708e801
|
Znaesh veche kak da se smeesh na sm'rtta, Aruta - kaza Amos. - Nikoga poveche niama da si s'shchiiat.
|
|
aruta
bulgaria
bulgarian
death
feist
laugh
life
magician
master
raymond
riftwar
saga
trask
амос
война
живот
магьосник
майстор
разлом
реймънд
смърт
смях
|
Raymond E. Feist |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
66df5db
|
Wisdom is the God-given ability to see life with rare objectivity and to handle life with rare stability.
|
|
christian
faith
god
joy
life
love
objectivity
peace
point-of-view
see
stability
stable
view
wisdom
|
Elizabeth George |
|
bd179b6
|
If you want to live a godly life, then choose to put the things into your mind that lead to living a godly life.
|
|
god
godly
life
living
|
Elizabeth George |
|
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 |
|
6e3abd5
|
He believed he understood, for the first time, why people say life is a dream: if you live long enough, the events of a lifetime, like the events of a dream, cannot be communicated, simply because they are of no interest to anyone. Human beings themselves, after death, become figures in a dream to the survivors , they fade away and are forgotten, like dreams that were once convincing, but which no one cares to hear about. There are parents who find in their children a receptive audience, with the result that in the child's credulous imagination they find a last semblance of life, which quickly dims out as if they had never existed. ...
|
|
life
|
Adolfo Bioy Casares |
|
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.
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life
meditate
meditation
new-ideas
patience
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Chris Prentiss |
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bb17509
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"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."
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life
precariousness
war
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Judith Butler |
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9171e34
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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.
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heart
life
nightmares
poetry
stone
unhappy-endings
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Lisa Schroeder |
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2ddf6e0
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"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."
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boundaries
butler
dissociation
grief
klein
life
loss
morality
otherness
self-preservation
seperation
survival
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Judith Butler |