|
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 |
|
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 |
|
a781adf
|
For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.
|
|
ender
feelings
genius
life
personality
|
Orson Scott Card |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
2622396
|
"The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me."
|
|
life
|
Richard Ford |
|
537a863
|
We all do what we do.
|
|
life
mgg
ray-bradbury
|
Ray Bradbury |
|
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 |
|
d7a93ba
|
Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about. Bringing the world to the window.
|
|
fight
inspiration
life
understanding-life
|
Markus Zusak |
|
9512b82
|
Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Sunday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books...books..books.
|
|
flowers
library
life
passion
|
Betty Smith |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
f319a87
|
The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.
|
|
beliefs
bigotry
fear
inferiority
life
race-relations
racism
superiority
white-people
|
James Baldwin |
|
968819c
|
insanin butun eylemleri kendisine yoneliktir, butun hizmetleri kendine hizmettir, butun sevgisi kendini sevmesindendir.
|
|
life
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
ed603a0
|
those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.
|
|
ignorance
life
possibility
|
Franz Kafka |
|
42c20c6
|
"Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery. If she had not come along the Via Piemonte that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piemonte that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will. ("For The Rest Of Her Life")"
|
|
fate
free-will
life
mystery
random-chance
story
|
Cornell Woolrich |
|
dfb0aa6
|
He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.
|
|
life
|
Milan Kundera |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
7fd6013
|
I kept my expectations low, which is one of the secrets of life.
|
|
life
secret
|
Anne Lamott |
|
286bfb2
|
"If life were a movie, we'd have had what they call a "meet cute"."
|
|
life
love
meet-cute
|
James Patterson |
|
8771415
|
lmr'@ hy lHy@, lmwt nfsh ykll bjll@ lHq byn ydyh.
|
|
life
woman
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
021f2a2
|
En los momentos mas terribles de la vida solemos caer en una suerte de irresponsabilidad protectora y en vez de pensar en lo que nos ocurre dirigimos la atencion a trivialidades.
|
|
irresponsibility
life
procrastination
trauma
|
Adolfo Bioy Casares |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
1d6ef57
|
The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.
|
|
jeffrey-archer
life
popularity
sons-of-fortune
|
Jeffrey Archer |
|
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 |
|
9c425e3
|
Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
|
|
evil
good
john-galt
life
man
mind
morality
morals
objectivism
philosophy
pursuit-of-happiness
reason
think
thinking
values
virtue
|
Ayn Rand |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
9dafa6b
|
Onzi, shcho biaga ot uchastta si, mozhe niakoi den da otkrie, che samo e izbral po-priaka p'teka.
|
|
inspirational
journey
life
path
|
J.R.R. Tolkien |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
aead2e9
|
She has failed. She wishes she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her.
|
|
life
sadness
|
Michael Cunningham |
|
6b2527f
|
You do it how you can do it, so long as it's getting done, you're okay.
|
|
inspirational
life
|
Emma Forrest |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
bd08a45
|
Tragedies in hindsight look like farces.
|
|
life
tragedy
|
Julian Barnes |
|
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 |
|
3fd11af
|
Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.
|
|
life
|
Jim Butcher |
|
43e5b18
|
There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.
|
|
life
truth
|
Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
cde4f06
|
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
|
|
dying
last-words
life
|
Oliver Sacks |
|
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 |
|
d4adf34
|
... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.
|
|
ageing
life
|
Julian Barnes |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
61a552d
|
...and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.
|
|
life
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
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 |
|
579313e
|
In India everything has a use and a value.
|
|
life
use
value
|
Tahir Shah |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
f4560e3
|
The kinds of purchases surveyed in the news generally sit well beyond necessity. In acquiring them, what we are after is rarely solely or even chiefly just material satisfaction; we are also guided by a deeper, often unconscious desire for some form of psychological transformation. We don't only want to things; we want to be through our ownership of them. Once we examine consumer behaviour with sufficient attention and generosity, it becomes clear that we aren't indelibly materialistic at all. What makes our age distinctive is our ambition to try to accomplish a variety of complex psychological goals via the acquisition of material goods.
|
|
change
desires
life
material-goods
materialism
necessity
psychology
purchases
|
Alain de Botton |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
320ac14
|
There's no comfort, it seems, in the world of objects.
|
|
alienation
life
melancholy
|
Michael Cunningham |
|
442ec4b
|
For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want - but an end?
|
|
existence
life
|
Isaac Asimov |
|
f2aeabf
|
Proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.
|
|
life
|
Tim O'Brien |
|
038ce3f
|
When you mess something up, you learn for the next time.
|
|
life
life-and-living
|
Ned Vizzini |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
28451ce
|
Nothing in life was as ugly as death.
|
|
life
|
Graham Greene |
|
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 |
|
b55abfa
|
Life was small but good. (15)
|
|
life
simplicity
small
|
Francesca Lia Block |
|
fd779ea
|
Trails are like that: you're floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and flute boys, then suddenly you're struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak...just like life.
|
|
life
trails
|
Jack Kerouac |
|
6b07ec6
|
Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie.
|
|
death
life
post-apocalyptic
road
|
Cormac McCarthy |
|
0221c6b
|
These days every morning begins like a joke you think you have heard before, but there is no one telling it whom you can stop. One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar, then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon, then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar. Each one takes up an entire day. The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West is pulling on the world; on the drive to work cars are swinging comically from lane to lane. The houses and lawns belong in cartoons. The hours collapse into one another's arms. The stories arc over noon and descend like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening. You wish you could stop listening and get serious. Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line which never arrives till very late at night, just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp, just before you begin laughing in the dark.
|
|
life
life-and-living
|
Billy Collins |
|
9c2067b
|
In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life.
|
|
death
life
tragedy
|
Sara Gruen |
|
dbee3cb
|
Cos'e quella sensazione che si prova quando ci si allontana in macchina dalle persone e le si vede recedere nella pianura fino a diventare macchioline e disperdersi? E il mondo troppo grande che ci sovrasta, e l'Addio. Ma intanto, ci si proietta in avanti verso una nuova, folle avventura sotto il cielo.
|
|
life
people
travelling
|
Jack Kerouac |
|
1323b6f
|
Ne, ne vienas zmogus ilgai negaletu pakelti tokio liepsningo gyvenimo. <...> Niekas negaletu taip ilgai diena nakti deginti visus savo ziburius, eikvoti visus savo vulkanus, niekas neistengtu taip ilgai diena nakti stoveti liepsnose, kasdien daug valandu su ikaitusia galva mastyti, nuolatos megaudamasis, nuolatos kurdamas, nuolatos sviesus, su budriais jausmais ir nervais nelyginant pilis, uz kurios langu kasdien skamba muzika, o naktimis tviska tukstanciai zvakiu.
|
|
life
lithuanian
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
4d82755
|
There are too many fault lines to count now.
|
|
fault-lines
life
love
nicholas-sparks
|
Nicholas Sparks |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
02ebe02
|
Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.
|
|
inspirational
life
moving-forward
|
Jack London |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
fc9ff91
|
Life is no more than the repeated fulfilling of a permanent desire.
|
|
life
|
Alexandre Dumas |
|
ab55565
|
Now it was done. He was free of Xanth forever. Free to make his own life, without being ridiculed or mothered or tempted. Free to be himself. Bink put his face in his hands and cried.
|
|
freedom
life
|
Piers Anthony |
|
af0bbbe
|
Always remember that the tales of another are never as wondrous as your own.
|
|
life
life-experience
|
Michael J. Sullivan |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
0eac78e
|
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon, too soon--before life itself.
|
|
disillusionment
life
youth
|
Joseph Conrad |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
878ea62
|
You have to accept gifts occasionally, because there are some things you can't give yourself
|
|
life
|
Michael Marshall Smith |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
0127538
|
Si percibo en otra persona nada mas que lo superficial, percibo principalmente las diferencias, lo que nos separa. Si penetro hasta el nucleo, percibo nuestra identidad, el hecho de nuestra hermandad.
|
|
humanity
life
love
peace
|
Erich Fromm |
|
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 |
|
6759640
|
I've been alive a long time, long enough to know that the more baggage you carry in life, the more unstable you'll be, until eventually you get sick of carrying it, and then you just fall down.
|
|
baggage
fall
grief
life
mental-illness
mourn
mourning
unstable
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
074a0a6
|
l tbn amlk fy lHy@ `l~ mwt nsn
|
|
hopes
life
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
9171e34
|
STONE Let my heart turn to stone. Maybe then I can sleep without nightmares. May be then I can eat without a stomachache. Maybe then I can read without fear of an unhappy ending. Take the knife out of my heart and,please, let it turn to stone.
|
|
heart
life
nightmares
poetry
stone
unhappy-endings
|
Lisa Schroeder |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
946e723
|
If you are surrounded by people who not only don't believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.
|
|
life
philosophy
zen
zen-and-the-art-of-happiness
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
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 |
|
3641a33
|
... one can't live without falling now and again.
|
|
life
life-lessons
|
Elizabeth Hoyt |
|
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 |
|
d34484e
|
Shout to the top!
|
|
cheer
fun
happy
joy
life
protest
shout
voice
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
c7ef9e4
|
I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling. Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as every stepped, getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about it.
|
|
life
|
P.G. Wodehouse |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
96f3dbd
|
...some events in life would remain beyond my ability to control or manage them. Some events would just happen.
|
|
life
|
Joan Didion |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |