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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 )
c0f936b Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn't looking. life neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
28451ce Nothing in life was as ugly as death. life Graham Greene
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
708e801 Znaesh veche kak da se smeesh na sm'rtta, Aruta - kaza Amos. - Nikoga poveche niama da si s'shchiiat. амос aruta bulgaria bulgarian death feist laugh life магьосник magician майстор master raymond разлом реймънд riftwar saga смърт смях trask война живот Raymond E. Feist
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
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
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
af0bbbe Always remember that the tales of another are never as wondrous as your own. life life-experience Michael J. Sullivan
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
038ce3f When you mess something up, you learn for the next time. life life-and-living Ned Vizzini
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
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
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
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
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
442ec4b For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want - but an end? existence life Isaac Asimov
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
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
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
2da0e11 Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed ... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went. ageing aging life midlife-crisis old time Philip K. Dick
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
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
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
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
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
8fcf453 These people all fling themselves at me. Because I am uneasy and sad they all fling themselves at me larger than life. But I can put my arm up to avoid the impact and they slide gently to the ground. Individualists, completely wrapped up in themselves, thank God. It's the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun - that's the person you've got to be wary of. extrovert fun individualist life people sad uneasy wary Jean Rhys
df4e433 "The first of 'Goose's Two Laws of Survival.' It runs thus, 'The weak are meat the strong do eat.' " ... Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. "The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That's it." humorous life David Mitchell
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
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
02ebe02 Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light. inspirational life moving-forward Jack London
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
6b07ec6 Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie. death life post-apocalyptic road Cormac McCarthy
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
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
3641a33 ... one can't live without falling now and again. life life-lessons Elizabeth Hoyt
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
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
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
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
4fcacf7 Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. bean family life relationships Orson Scott Card
09ed7d0 When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him...It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward...Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time...the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life. life meaningful-life simple simplicity work Leo Tolstoy
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
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
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
b5151eb The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. frustration lie life motivation Geoff Dyer
db3704b "Are you happy?" "I think I may be going to be happy." Remember, things do not force, forge or fashion. They fall into place" fate happiness hope life Ann Beattie
1b4f8c7 What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison... intelligent-design life power Jeanne DuPrau
146da4f This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times-or you will be useless. life Mitch Albom
6f7bda1 "El, you are telling me to run away with a man to become his mistress." "I am telling you to be happy. Even if it lasts only a little while. We must snatch what we can when we have the chance. Life is so very lonely when we don't." eleanor happiness life loneliness Jennifer Ashley
a48a099 "Granger stood looking at Montag. "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." life Ray Bradbury
035a70e "I wonder if it's suffering." "What, our generation?" "The baby!" life Kenzaburō Ōe
3a6b6b3 He came to destroy sin because it is fatal. life sin John Piper
729db85 For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me [...] I could consider this inn to be a prison, since I'm compelled to stay here; I could consider it a kind of club, because I meet other people here. However, unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable. I leave those who chatter in the living room, from where the cosy sound of music and voices reaches me. I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colours and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, I sing vague songs that I compose while I wait. Night will fall on all of us and the carriage will arrive. I enjoy the breeze given to me and the soul given to me to enjoy it and I ask no more questions, look no further. If what I leave written in the visitors' book is one day read by others and entertains them on their journey, that's fine. If no one reads it or is entertained by it, that's fine too. life Fernando Pessoa
73044a4 Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. life living meaning mortality Muriel Spark
9fc9884 Why does everyone have to be so cool all the time? And also why do white people always have to act like black people to avoid looking like dorks? life Sarah Miller
1193782 "Surely," he said, "the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning's fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn." life nature patience wisdom E.R. Eddison
65b0769 "Last night I thought about all that kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before." He got out of bed. "It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over." "Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything." "Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were bothered? About something important, about something real?" books bother create creation creativity destruction ignorance important kerosene life lifetime observation real reality reality-check thought time work world Ray Bradbury
4905a54 Under the influence of mercury, which he administered to himself daily as a salve for his syphilis, & laudanum, which he drank each evening in imprecisely measured amounts to enable him to sleep, because of all things, this brave man feared only his dreams, opiate-enhanced nightmares that gave him no respite & which always ended in flames from which he rose phoenix-like just before dawn each morning, to recommence building what was already ash. life Richard Flanagan
3351c48 But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day. life Jean Rhys
9ba15b4 But in life you have to take lots of deductions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and why you like others. life Mark Haddon
23ed252 But life in the fast lane took a toll on men who cared and it was eating Jonas one small piece at a time. life Christine Feehan
0236314 You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
9b8251b But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country - The Rest Of My Life. inspirational knowledge life Kate Atkinson
f93063f There was a heaven beyond anything he knew where there was no jet fuel, no jumping, no burning towers... but he wasn't looking beyond yet. He was still looking back. death heaven life new-york new-york-city september-11-attacks september-11th skyscrapers terrorism Rebecca McNutt
9aa278d "-Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million." -- life J.D. Salinger
8896b03 I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances. change-your-life christopher-mccandless life Jon Krakauer
367f723 If want a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. life Ann Patchett
3644764 "Maybe someday, if I succeed at something, I'll stop saying, "It isn't fair" about everything else." aims ambition dedication determination difficulties dreams equality fairness hardships life perseverance success trials Lois Lowry
0e88053 The New Your energy goes beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. It's too much for some people and it grinds them down, but it lifts up and animates the rest of us. human-nature individuality inspiration knowledge-of-self life living-in-a-city philosophy sadness security Lawrence Block
0207709 I wasn't sure about that, but one never knows. Sometimes a neighborhood, like a culture or civilization, is strong enough to absorb and acculturate any number of newcomers. But I don't know if that's true around here any longer. The outward forms and appearances look the same - [...]- but the substance has been altered. life philosophy Nelson DeMille
581d398 Life is so funny sometimes that you just have to laugh. funny happy joy laugh life live Rebecca McNutt
02249c5 Accept the unknown. There are no secondary characters. Each one is silhouetted against the sky. All have the same stature. Within a given story some simply occupy more space. life place-in-life John Berger
e64e983 The eyes were certainly memorable and beautiful, moist calves' eyes heavily lashed and with the same look of troubled pain at the unpredictability of the world's terrors. confusion life pain P.D. James
7b373f8 In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did? .. give up days and weeks of our lives, addicted to someone else's drama. drama dying envy ill life live others quality Mitch Albom
ca2349a How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning? joy life sadness Jack Kerouac
e73b373 That is life's talent. To accept new things. life Hiroki Endo
35f8d51 I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again. addiction-and-recovery addiction-cure addiction-free alcohol-abuse alcohol-addiction alcohol-addiction-treatment alcoholism-cure amazon author book bookstore chris-prentiss cure-addiction drug-abuse drug-addiction drug-addiction-treatment end-the-cycle freedom great-authors great-books kindle life new-book nook passages-malibu passages-ventura philosophy self-help sober sobriety wisdom Chris Prentiss
cc660e2 The river of life, of mysterious laws and mysterious choice, flows past a deserted embankment; and along that other deserted embankment Charles now begins to pace, a man behind the invisible gun carriage on which rests his own corpse. He walks towards an imminent, self-given death? I think not; for he has at which to build; has already begun, though he would still bitterly deny it, thought there are tears in his eyes to support his denial, to realize that life, however advantageously Sarah may in some ways seem to fit the role of Sphinx, is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city's iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea. life John Fowles
0264fc6 One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself. life relationships Mitch Albom
35efc6b I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary. life ordinary record story winter Markus Zusak
e04bb16 I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal. humanity life J.D. Salinger
2b31999 It took him half an hour to reach the little mission chapel. From his position on his back in the river he could see just the tip of the steeple, but for the most part he gazed upward at the constellations. Rudy knew his constellations, because each one of his daughters had done a science project on them and they'd spent hours lying on their backs in the middle of the Edgar Lee Masters campus looking up at the sky. As the river bent to the south, he could see Virgo and Centaurus coming into view. At first they reminded him of true beauty, and he was overwhelmed. He knew that this heart-piercing ache, however painful, was the central experience of his life and that he would have to come to terms with it. No one - not Aristotle, not Epicurus, not Siva Singh - would ever convince him otherwise. But then it occurred to him that Virgo and Centaurus were just as arbitrary as the rudimentary classification system he'd used for his books - Helen's books. There were a lot of stars left out of the constellations, and nothing to stop you from drawing the lines in different ways to create different pictures. He wanted to lift his wings and fly, but he didn't have the power. He could only let the river carry him along. life river Robert Hellenga
91a958e "Son, anything can happen to anyone," my father told me, "but it usually doesn't." happenings life probability Philip Roth
fde2213 Incredible that the best route to winning friends is not necessarily kindness or flattery, but letting them know you won't tolerate their bullshit. life Sarah Miller
2c65515 For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. So that I was never disappointed, so to speak, whatever I did, in this domain. And these inseparable fools I indulged turn about, that they might understand their foolishness. change-your-life foolishness life Samuel Beckett
e7edd5a La libertad es una carga pesada, extrana y abrumadora para el espiritu que ha de llevarla. No es comoda. No es un regalo que se recibe, sino una eleccion que se hace, y la eleccion puede ser dificil. life Ursula K. Le Guin
0b34c64 I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another. grace life poems poetry Barbara Kingsolver
2edcf00 Pray that your children will develop a heart that seeks after God. god life parenting power prayer Stormie Omartian
d2b10a4 Which of us saved the other from the Labyrinth, Ged? life saved Ursula K. Le Guin
0b2141c I might be the hazardous waste site that polluted it, but Cape Breton Island is still my home. canada-day cape-breton coal country hazardous home life living nova-scotia patriot pollution steel sydney-tar-ponds toxic Rebecca McNutt
fc27ae4 With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they're happy. hope lie life reality truth Fernando Pessoa
3d1c64a "happiness is a choice. If you choose to mope and be glum, you shall be; but if you wish to be happy and determine to enjoy what life has to offer, then you can have that as well. "She said that nothing is all good or all bad, that life offers everyone a mix of both--though sometimes it does not seem so, and bad is all we can see in our lives, while in the lives of others we see only good and feel envy. She said we must enjoy the good despite the bad, else life can beat us down and leave us hopeless, and that is no way to live." envy good happiness life Lynsay Sands
06ae49b "My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. "You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. "It is why we are drawn to babies . . ." He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals." birth connected cycle death funeral karma life love marriage spirit we-are-one Mitch Albom
ae181ef What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. inner-life life thought H.G. Wells
3ce96b0 If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? [...] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. life love science Yann Martel
8641e47 You know, it's really very peculiar. To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead. dying immortality life living mortality philosophy Milan Kundera
1a9b603 Ender began to eat, slowly and carefully, pretending not to notice he was the center of attention. funny humour life Orson Scott Card
fa6760e Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! life origins Salman Rushdie
148b164 This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real. life reality Philip Gourevitch
2dbda2e Like a small boat adrift in the fog, she caught glimpses during patches when the mist cleared of a world far away, in which everything was changing. change floating life Ruth Ozeki
13cee74 Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. death hope inspirational life motivatonal Timothy Ferriss
74d9de4 "We need to listen carefully to the wisdom of our symptoms and to try to decode their meaning, because some of us have learned to settle, to fall silent; to deny that unfair circumstances exist or matter, and then to call our compromises "life." But our bodies, our deeper unconscious selves, remain harder to fool." decode exist life self settle silent Harriet Lerner
d4fe732 But then, we have science, and with its help we shall discover Truth once more; then we shall accept it in full knowledge. Knowledge is of a higher order than feeling; awareness of life is of a higher order than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal to us the laws of nature, and knowledge of the laws of nature will confer upon us a happiness beyond happiness. life nature science Fyodor Dostoyevsky
33d7bcf "I was there laughing and joking with everyone else, but it's like there was some part of me standing back, watching, thinking, "Is this as good as it gets?" conflict life problems youth Margaret Peterson Haddix
2a309cf "With a great effort the Don opened his eyes to see his son once more. He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful." life the-godfather Mario Puzo
33444c3 "I was the nicest person you'd ever want to know," Alex recalls, "but the world wasn't that way. The problem was that if you were just a nice person, you'd get crushed. I refused to live a life where people could do that stuff to me." life nice person world Susan Cain
499c15a ... sometimes you count the days, sometimes you weigh them. life Elizabeth Gilbert
fa87252 All this attempt to control... We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old... The basic idea of science - that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational - that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging... But now... science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting to not fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it can not tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways - air, and water, and land - because of ungovernable science... At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science has vanished. Ever since Newton and Descartes, science has explicitly offered us the vision of total control. Science has claimed the power to eventually control everything, through its understanding of natural laws. But in the twentieth century, that claim has been shattered beyond repair. First, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle set limits on what we could know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn't make any practical difference as we go through our lives. Then Godel's theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know what we call 'reason' is just an arbitrary game. It's not special, in the way we thought it was. And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. It is as mundane as the rain storms we cannot predict. And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old - the dream of total control - has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly... We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now... it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question - What should I do with my power? - which is the very question science says it cannot answer. higher-law innovation life science Michael Crichton
d3bb3dc "When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It's so peaceful here. "Merry Christmas, " I whisper to myself. "Merry Christmas, Nate." cora hope life loneliness nate peace sadness Lisa Ann Sandell
3295039 But truthfully? Let me tell you what I honestly think. I think, maybe he hasn't even noticed that I'm gone. But. I have. life missing Aimee Bender
22b92f0 "So life isn't exciting?" continued Gary. "Great. Give me boredom. At least I know where I'm going to eat and sleep tonight. I'll still have a job on Monday. Yeah?" He turned and looked at Richard. Richard nodded, hesitantly. "Yeah." life Neil Gaiman
de1b3d1 Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom. learning life university Chip Kidd
ee86838 Famously, Gloria Steinem once advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to marry. What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too. life women Elizabeth Gilbert
de0c5a2 Mom used to say that the thoughts in our heads were nothing more than electrical impulses. I remember Dad and her talking about this over dinner. It frustrated Dad that the human brain can fire electrical sparks and think, but that the electricity he'd pump into an android brain would never give it independent thought. The body isn't that different from a machine. Humans and androids both run on electricity. That lightning spark of energy I saw in the reverie. That was my mother's last thought, an echo of electricity, something that sparked when I entered her dreamscape. That spark is gone now. Her life is gone now. Everything that made her, her, is gone now. Faded into nothing. dreams electricity independent life spark talk thoughts Beth Revis
2ab0b40 If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us. life madness sanity tragedy Alain de Botton
56e2ece Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity. gossip india life mumbay wisdom Tahir Shah
99d16c9 He's turned against me too, Theon realized. Of late it seemed to him as if the very stones of Winterfell had turned against him. If I die, I die friendless and abandoned. What choice did that leave him, but to live? death friendless game-of-thrones life lorren theon winterfell George R.R. Martin
4d7afbe From the moment we're born, death is our final destination. Only the date and time of our arrival is unknown. life Tess Gerritsen
2ab1b15 He has always been the kid who cries too easily and laughs too easily, the kid who begins giggling in church for no reason at all, who blinks hotly in shame and frustration whenever he misses a question in class, living in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes. crying daydreams laughing life Kevin Brockmeier
067a217 This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death. life pride G.K. Chesterton
e2fc005 The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating. cells complexity evolution life materialism molecules naturalism nature science Paul Davies
09d73de He wondered at times whether he didn't belong to a class of people secretly convinced they had an arrangement with fate; in return for docility or ingenuous good will they were to be shielded from the worst brutalities in life. brutality fate good-will life Saul Bellow
63fa695 Let's only care about the place where we are. There's beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else. If there's someone beyond the curve in the road, Let them worry about what's past the curve in the road, That's what the road is to them. being feeling god it-is-what-it-is life living meaning nature paganism pantheism worry Alberto Caeiro
509230b Leven is het weer. Leven is maaltijden. Lunch op een blauw-geruit kleed waar zout op is gemorst. De geur van tabak. Brie, gele appels, messen met houten handvaten. hapiness life James Salter
7bc8b10 And when I raised myself to look at the man who'd spoken, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall. life love Arthur Golden
09d591d There the old Eskimo hunters she had known in her childhood thought the riches of life were intelligence, fearlessness, and love. A man with these gifts was rich and was a great spirit who was admired in the same way that the gussaks admired a man with money and goods. intelligence life love riches Jean Craighead George
fc79326 Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells death life metaphor microscope pathologist pathology Yann Martel
3c20d7b That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you. death government government-corruption hemingway illness life syphilis war Ernest Hemingway
429e5af Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open - the only way to stop the story from running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. end fiction life reading stories Jeanette Winterson
90790a6 And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackness, that his life has consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it. life order John le Carré
5d0fd82 Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can. asian-american hundred-secret-senses life Amy Tan
efadb14 You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really. life science survival wisdom Nick Hornby (Author)
43ac554 "Then the true name for religion,' Fat said, 'is death.' 'The secret name,' I agreed. 'You got it. Jesus died; Asklepios died - they killed Mani worse than they killef jesus, but nobody even cares; nobody even remembers. They killed the Catharist in southern France by the tens of thousands. In the Thirty Years War, hundreds of people died. Protestants and Catholics - manual slaughter. Death is the real name for it; not God, not the Savior, not love - death. Kevin is rights about his cat. It's all there in his dead cat. The Great Judge can't answer Kevin: "Why did my cat die?" Answer: "Damned i I knoe." There is no answer; there is only a dead animal that just wanted to cross the street. We're all animals that want to cross the street only something mows us down half-way across that we never saw. Go ask Kevin. "Your cat was stupid." "Who made the cat? Why did he make the cat stupid? Did the cat learn by being killed, and if so, what did he learn? Did Sherri learn anything from dying of cancer? did gloria learn anything-' 'Okay, enough,' Fat said. 'Kevin is right,' I said. 'Go out and get laid.' god human-nature humanity irrationality life religion science-fiction spirituality world Philip K. Dick
f520886 this isn't so much romance as it is opportunity [victor mancini] human-relationships humor life love Chuck Palahniuk
b12959e The genome is as complicated and indeterminate as ordinary life, because it is ordinary life. This should come as a relief. Simple determinism, whether of the genetics or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will. humanity life randomness Matt Ridley
f4efc0e From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born? frustration life Irving Stone
86c0744 The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had not yet taken form. Black and white, he said. Presence and absence. life magpie mystery void Kate Mosse
5afc299 Death starves us of life. So we learn to fabricate our own immortalities. fabricate fabrication immortalities immortality life starve John Fowles
718ddb5 "I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away." "What is the other, Henrik?" Though he knew the answer. "Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch." Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for. "So am I, Henrik," he said. "So am I." - "The Burning Room" by Michael Connelly" death life mission Michael Connelly
e939939 Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless? life life-lessons philosphy power thought Carlos Castaneda
6c517a1 It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience! life James Fenimore Cooper
4ed9830 You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't know yet about the habit they have, of coming back. life Margaret Atwood
fa7df4f I know friends should be supportive of each other's life decisions and all that. friendships life supportive Sophie Kinsella
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