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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
146da4f This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times-or you will be useless. life Mitch Albom
e73b373 That is life's talent. To accept new things. life Hiroki Endo
0fcdfd3 And what have you been up to? she asked. Oh, I don't know really, I said. Not much. Learning how to be a good loser. life losers Miriam Toews
56e2ece Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity. gossip india life mumbay wisdom Tahir Shah
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
ceebd3f All of his life had been filled with crashing ends to promising beginnings. life R.A. Salvatore
fb3feb1 I never knew him. We both knew this place, apparently, this literal small backwater, looked at it long enough to memorize it, our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved, or its memory is (it must have changed a lot). Our visions coincided--'visions' is too serious a word--our looks, two looks: art 'copying from life' and life itself, life and the memory of it so compressed they've turned into each other. Which is which? Life and the memory of it cramped, dim, on a piece of Bristol board, dim, but how live, how touching in detail --the little that we get for free, the little of our earthly trust. Not much. About the size of our abidance along with theirs: the munching cows, the iris, crisp and shivering, the water still standing from spring freshets, the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. life life-and-living memory Elizabeth Bishop
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
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
281a5eb Let them mock, Bran thought. No one mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed. life George R.R. Martin
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
71b98ee while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together. future life past present thought-provoking thoughts-on-life Monica Ali
fdadc11 And tomorrow we'll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn't kill you after all. coping-mechanism life teachings Robin Hobb
1a9b603 Ender began to eat, slowly and carefully, pretending not to notice he was the center of attention. funny humour life Orson Scott Card
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
b22690a You don't know what would have happened if I hadn't pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked. crazy ender genius life love push Orson Scott Card
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
1d0d322 I don't care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career -- every woman needs a couple of chicks who'll break out the sangria just because you need to vent. friendship girl-life life relationships women Jen Lancaster
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
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
148b164 This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real. life reality Philip Gourevitch
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
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
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
28473ee Wine is like many of the fine experiences in life which take time and experience to extract their full pleasure and meaning. life meaning-of-life pleasure wine Douglas Preston
c034968 ...he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them them over and over again to give birth to themselves. identity life self Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
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
14e990c Run after truth until you're breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments. life truth Naguib Mahfouz
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
1adb6c9 People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution? animals canada dangerous death earth environment environmentalism evil garbage help hippie hope human life litter mental-illness people plants pollution scary smog water Rebecca McNutt
d6ae115 It was as though she had veered, accidentally, into her own life. life Carol Shields
d68f494 Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfahlen der scheinbaren Sache. life philosophy sin truth Franz Kafka
072f96a ...courage wasn't something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn't a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more. courage jodi-picoult life love Jodi Picoult
46444c1 Arguably the greatest technological triumph of the century has been the public-health system, which is sophisticated preventive and investigative medicine organized around mostly low- and medium-tech equipment; ... fully half of us are alive today because of the improvements. life medicine public-health science technology triumph Richard Rhodes
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
2650fe9 But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end? happiness life Franz Kafka
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
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
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
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
ca2349a How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning? joy life sadness Jack Kerouac
3a6b6b3 He came to destroy sin because it is fatal. life sin John Piper
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
ac1a4db I've heard that when you're in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you're hyper-aware of what's happening around you. As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me. Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren't bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder's cursing, my pounding heartbeat. I feel nothing--not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb. Scent and taste disappear. The only thing about my body that works is my eyes,and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land--a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home. My eyes drink up the image of the planet--and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I've never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent--it dips and curves in ways I don't recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect. And it's not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home,but it will never be the home I left behind. amy-martin beth-revis crash discovery earth elder godspeed home journey life mission planet shades-of-earth shuttle travel Beth Revis
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
d46a0c2 I am positive of only a few things in life, and one is that if you want to have a decent middle and old age, you have to get exercise almost every day. day life Anne Lamott
1dc2fd1 It actually felt harder, not easier, to be with people. The toughest challenge was my face; maintaining a 'normal' expression was utterly exhausting. life love moving-on sad wife Marian Keyes
1caf77b Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time. life purpose time Jeannette Walls
1e5711f We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others. compassion human-beings landry life others ourselves pearl-in-the-mist thoughtful v-c-andrews worrying V.C. Andrews
1ee3893 Things are not always how they seem. christmas first-kiss holiday life love my-true-love-gave-to-me winter Stephanie Perkins
7a0c003 "... he was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. "Damn it," he sighed. "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" life suffering Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
7a2a722 Y lo que, por el contrario, me sucede a mi en las raras horas de placer, lo que para mi es delicia, suceso, elevacion y extasis, eso no lo conoce, ni lo ama, ni lo busca el mundo mas que si acaso en las novelas; en la vida, lo considera una locura. Y en efecto, si el mundo tiene razon, si esta musica de los cafes, estas diversiones en masa, estos hombres americanos contentos con tan poco tienen razon, entonces soy yo el que no la tiene, entonces es verdad que estoy loco, entonces soy efectivamente el lobo estepario que tantas veces me he llamado, la bestia descarriada en un mundo que le es extrano e incomprensible, que ya no encuentra ni su hogar, ni su ambiente, ni su alimento. existencialismo existentialism hesse life lobo lobo-estepario modern-life vida-moderna Hermann Hesse
1f6bdbc He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable. julian-barnes life memories memory the-only-story truth unanswerable unhappy-memories Julian Barnes
a362d3b The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts. future life science-fiction Neal Stephenson
6f2c7fb He'll have to do without me, Jamie thought, not looking back. And then clearly, as if he'd been told, he knew Grenville /could/ do without him. There was somewhere else he had to go now, somewhere else he had to be. dark death emotional life light mental-hospital sailor vampire S.E. Hinton
1a2f2fe "Your actions create an "energy vortex" that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture." happiness inspirational-quotes life philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
6e63d8b Are you looking at a dead man now? life Markus Zusak
a66da67 On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. human life man W. Somerset Maugham
6cb46bd I will walk without noise and I will open the door in darkness and I will death everything-is-illuminated life sad Jonathan Safran Foer
abfe21b People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life. life life-lessons Sue Monk Kidd
ad48e7e What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death. life Jeffrey Eugenides
23f296b Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having sent signs of the hunger beforehand, that He was just, having sent the hunger in the first place, or having sent the whales and the teeming reindeer in the end. Some folk learned that He was to be found in the world-in the richness of the grass and the pearly beauty of the Heavens, and others learned that He could not be found in the world, for the world is always wanting, and God is completion. learning life wisdom world Jane Smiley
6a8a9eb When one grows older one learns that happiness--complete and unadulterated happiness--comes only in moments, and must be recognized and savored to the full, for even in the happiest life, the complete joy is not always present. joy life Victoria Holt
b378ce2 You can't save everyone. It's not an option. choose choosing life option save Darren Shan
69be5de Ya me sobrara tiempo para descansar cuando me muera, pero esta eventualidad no esta todavia en mis proyectos. death-and-dying life Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
b76510d For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourth persons, as to take up three or four exciting acts in a play. life love marriage nobel-prize quotes Günter Grass
b8e2ac6 "An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most . . . No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials. We are no more distressed at their proliferation than an owl is at a population explosion among field mice . . . but in the animal world things are different, and human feelings are different . . . Fecundity is anathema only in the animal. "Acres and acres of rats" has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, "acres and acres of tulips"." gross human life nature page-164 perspective plants Annie Dillard
68e78ff But the lost one is with you. Her tenderness strengthens you, Her gaiety uplifts you, Her honor purifies you. More than memory, The lost one is found. life memory Gail Carson Levine
270c760 I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say: Bad shit at home? You guys are running away? Yeah, I said. I understand, said, Noehmi. feeling irma-voth life literature miriam-toews novel Miriam Toews
132249d When you understand that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trash can, then we'll figure out who you're going to be. life Chuck Palahniuk
27ac740 The world is actually a mirror, and as you change, you will see everything around you changing as well, mirroring your changes. chris-prentiss life passages-malibu passages-ventura quotes Chris Prentiss
669f082 Dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, cats dogs life loyalty traitor Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
667c577 But it would be like going to Heaven and not finding any of your friends there. Her life would go all beatific and empty in the eyes. home life living where-you-live Lorrie Moore
ffd5ba2 But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme.... human-life life Arthur C. Clarke
65cd5c6 I know now it is children who accept life; grown people cover it up and pretend it is different with drinks. children drinking life Rumer Godden
28529d9 I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from no place rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loosen: I walk on my way. life purpose Annie Dillard
c254671 How little it takes to make a young girl happy! A pretty dress, sunshine, and somebody opposite, and they are blest. happiness life love naivete pretty-little-things Louisa May Alcott
28c76d4 "Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life." -- kafka life writers writing Ernst Pawel
c439d48 "Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the "irresponsibility" of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life." fiction-writing life morality James Wood
640d6f6 Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are some who are weak by nature. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life-- that's what I call great. The reason I'm so fond of Gaston is not because he has a strong will or a good head. Rather it's because, weakling and coward that he is, he keeps on fighting in his own way. inspirational life strength weakness Shūsaku Endō
62d1458 But I will never ask anyone from our village-from any village in Tlanth-to risk his or her life unless I'm willing to myself. life morals war Sherwood Smith
c936336 So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, to your community around you, to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. devote important life live love meaning purpose wrong Mitch Albom
2a61589 It takes practice, feeling happy about the ever enfolding events of life, and, because of all the conditioning we have undergone before this, it may be very difficult to make the change, but if we take the saying to heart and practice it, as the days unfold we will find ourselves living ever happier lives, smiling more, and finally, laughing more. happiness happy health i-ching life smile wisdom wu-wei Wu Wei
ca1bd59 "Oh, Youth may listen patiently, While sad Experience tells her tale, But Doubt sits smiling in his eye, For ardent Hope will still prevail! He hears how feeble Pleasure dies, By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe; He turns to Hope--and she replies, "Believe it not-it is not so!" hope life poetry Anne Brontë
cc5d0e3 The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? empathy human-nature life miracle stars walden walden-pond Henry David Thoreau
cf51f2c If they succeed, it will not matter if Man becomes immortal. He will have nothing to live for. greed greed-of-man immortality life man-s-pride page-58 true James Edwin Gunn
cfbea94 Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways. felt he-knew his-life life love love-of-his-life meant-the-most missed one-person only-love women Larry McMurtry
554a8b0 One should continue (of course with dignity) to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was not dead -obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life. life Elizabeth von Arnim
d120831 Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget. intelligence life Arthur C. Clarke
5237405 [W]hat makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. heaven-and-hell hell life life-and-death Chuck Palahniuk
d1adb32 Kids must spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? humor life Nick Hornby
d2f8c65 I know at least what I am,' he simply went on; 'the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent. I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again--in fact you've admitted to me as much--that I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me. life Henry James
d34ca7f We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same? inspirational life productivity repeating-the-past Stephen R. Covey
d34eb94 Das wirkliche Leben, meint er, sei ja so anders... Jedenfalls das seine, denkt er: da erkennt man keinen klaren Ablauf und keinen roten Faden, da zerrinnt es einfach, ohne Abschnitt und ohne Tat, die Leidenschaft zerrinnt in eine Stimmung, und auch die Entschlusse sind wie Sand, der leise durch die Finger rinnt, immer wieder nimmt man eine neue Handvoll, und wenn man sie aufmacht, ist wieder nichts darin geblieben, man ist verzweifelt, und auch das zerrinnt, wie die Hoffnung und der Jubel und der Schmerz und alles, wie das ganze Leben. life pain schmerz Max Frisch
d3883a3 The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. life living James Baldwin
0aa81e7 It's amazing what the gene pool will do to perpetuate itself. life perpetuation procreation Mohsin Hamid
da9fe00 You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's--I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well. But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens. life Alexander McCall Smith
4dc40a3 Realize that God uses the fires of life to purify your faith, to shape you into Christ's image, and to cause you to love Him...even more! christian faith fire god image life love pure realize shape Elizabeth George
4d6cb72 It's not some romanticized Atticus Finch-type picnic. You'd probably love it, the whole risk of it all, but it's not without a price. Out there in this city when you pass the bar, it's all broken dreams and out-of-reach stars. You have to be brilliant, and you have to throw away your social life, your hobbies, but more than that you can't get your moral values mixed up with legal ethics. They'll both clash whenever you least expect it, and when you hit a crossroad you have to know when to go left or right or when to just blindly go forward... can you do that? attorney bar-exam law law-school lawyer legal legal-system life morality Rebecca McNutt
08cf036 I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life. control life Robin Hobb
dc8e6ee Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often. culture life meaningfulness Robert Fulghum
2f261df You can be happy if you are willing to let go of your past and leave yourself unencumbered so you can fly freely. happiness life philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
df7e05b I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it - I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. life loneliness love Elizabeth Gilbert
07830f5 If we had directions, it wouldn't be life. It would be an assignment. Grunt work. life life-and-living James Patterson
e1f5874 Listen! I know it's not right to talk. Better to set an example, better to just start - I have already started - and - and can one really be unhappy? Oh, what do my grief and my misfortune matter if I have the strength to be happy? You know, I don't understand how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it! Or to speak with a man and not be happy in loving him? Oh, it's just that I can't express it - and yet there are so many things at every stop so beautiful that even the most desolate of men find them beautiful. Look at a child, look at Go's sunrise, look at the grass, how it grows, look into eyes that look at you and love you - life love meaning-in-life Fyodor Dostoyevsky
e433ec3 Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road. expectation hope hoping life life-and-living Elizabeth von Arnim
072ab11 A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming. empathy funerals honesty life optimism reality society sympathy Cecelia Ahern
46e2e79 ...it had probably been a long enough life. Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to someone else. What an odd thing existence was. illusion life life-is-a-dream reflection Kate Atkinson
0677a76 If you won't share my life with me, maybe you'll share my death. death life pygmy Chuck Palahniuk
061851b When you see something, it can't be unseen. When you hear a sound, it can never be unheard. I know, deep down, that this evening I have learned something that can never be unlearned. And the part of my world that is altered will never be the same. life Cecelia Ahern
e7996dc Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life? death god hell life religion Rob Bell
05e28b0 "Why is it when people are proud of me that my life sucks?" "Because growing up means making tough choices, and doing the right thing doesn't necessarily mean doing the thing that feels good." -- life mrs-collins noah-hutchins right-thing sucks Katie McGarry
e9e2b24 I don't want to reject my life. I want to change my life without changing my life. life Gretchen Rubin
376dedf When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered a few feet off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore. life Elizabeth Gilbert
f8053ff But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it. life life-and-death Iris Murdoch
f85103b "There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on Earth." Eddie looked confused. "People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless. "This is the greatest gift God can give you: To understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for." death enlightenment explanation god knowledge life life-after-death meaning-of-life peace power wisdom Mitch Albom
41f7e15 For years of our lives the days pass waywardly, featureless, without meaning, without particular happiness or unhappiness. Then, like turning over a tapestry when you have only known the back of it, there is spread the pattern. life patterns Jane Gardam
f9aa364 For we die every day; oblivion thrives Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files. life time Vladimir Nabokov
3ec0d1c Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. life perspective truths Jeanette Winterson
fb668e9 All sorts of strange people were around, people who looked more at home than she was, even the homeless ones who spoke no English, more at home maybe because they were younger, and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time. home house life migrants migration people time Mohsin Hamid
fc5c3f4 Perhaps everyone had their own way of preparing to die. Life got you ready. life Lorrie Moore
fc86fd4 God doesn't mock us. He never gives us a goal that we cannot accomplish in His strength. I want to assure you, you can glorify God, you MUST glorify God. But you have to determine deep within your heart that you're going to do it His way. god life strength Charles R. Swindoll
fd0b93e Fear doesn't stop a warrior. It pushes you further. life Chloe Neill
01ef7bc All of one's life is a struggle towards that; the narrow path between freedom and belonging. I have sometimes sacrificed freedom in order to belong, but more often I have given up all hope of belonging. freedom life Jeanette Winterson
3ca0c81 Art is long and life is short. gay life writers Christopher Bram
737a929 Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care... Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who at lucky! As for the other men, stagnant night is upon them. life lucky misery Victor Hugo
738e2b8 "She glanced around at the tombstones. "You're surrounded by death here. Way too depressing. You really might want to think about getting another job." "You see death and sadness in these sunken patches of dirt, I see lives lived fully and the good deeds of past generations influencing the future ones." caretaker death good-deeds graveyard inspiration life tombstones David Baldacci
1d41670 I cite too the ordinary fears of mortality the inspection of a fast-growing mole on the side of the nose blood in the stool a painful injury or the mournful witness of the slow death of a parent all this is given to all men as well as the starting awake in the nether hours of the night from such glutinous nightmare that on'e self name relationships nationality place in life all data of specificity wipe out amnesiatically asiatically you don't even know the idea human it is such a low hour of the night and he shares it with all of us. life stream-of-consciousness E.L. Doctorow
bf122fb Duerme, vuela, reposa: !Tambien se muere el mar! dreams life poetry Federico García Lorca
7e66bde See what's inside a drop of water. The whole seed of the universe. Come, come. See what's inside a drop of blood. The composition of life. It's all there. Hate as well. We approach the mystery of life, but it's impossible to understand the mystery of hate. The kind of hate that causes people not only to kill, but to want to erase you from the census of births. I have to concentrate on that mystery. Read everything there is. It has to be in a drop of blood. It has to have its chemistry. life war Manuel Rivas
8b99f5c He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky. coming-of-age death evil fear good-and-evil life manhood self-knowledge Ursula K. Le Guin
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