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f4279bf When a boy's first romantic interlude is with Pheobe the Dog-Faced Girl, he feels a need to get out into the world and find a new life. funny humor life love circus life-experience girls teenagers dating Annette Curtis Klause
38c9be7 If you like someone, you should have to make an effort. winter life love my-true-love-gave-to-me first-kiss christmas holiday Stephanie Perkins
1ee3893 Things are not always how they seem. winter life love my-true-love-gave-to-me first-kiss christmas holiday Stephanie Perkins
9ddb79d Not always getting what you want, but sometimes getting what you need. winter life love my-true-love-gave-to-me first-kiss christmas holiday Stephanie Perkins
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. literature life irma-voth miriam-toews feeling novel Miriam Toews
669f082 Dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, dogs life traitor cats loyalty Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
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
77aa610 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! reading life new-era Henry David Thoreau
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? miracle stars empathy life walden-pond walden human-nature Henry David Thoreau
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." morality life fiction-writing James Wood
91ff8bc It is a mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day and then every rational satisfaction your nature that you deny now will assault like a savage appetite. fear life inconfidence rationalism weakness emotions decisions safety George Eliot
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
9218da6 When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact. life expectations Arthur Nersesian
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. strength god life Charles R. Swindoll
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!" suffering life Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
cd30614 I have always said that the way to deal with the pain of other's is by sympathy, which is suffering with, and that the way to deal with one's own pain is to put one foot after the other. Yet I was never willing to suffer with others, and when my own pain hit me, I crawled into hole. Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A's in irony- that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or other's. to hide from anything. That was Marian's text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones. pain suffering humanity life Wallace Stegner
ad48e7e What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death. life Jeffrey Eugenides
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. war life Manuel Rivas
de61940 I was always moved when mean people were suddenly nice to me. It was a weakness that would lead me into some bad relationships later in life. relationships life love montréal pg-76 thirteen canada bad weakness Heather O'Neill
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. sympathy empathy reality honesty optimism life funerals society Cecelia Ahern
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
fc5c3f4 Perhaps everyone had their own way of preparing to die. Life got you ready. life Lorrie Moore
9dc0d97 Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain... life Lorrie Moore
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. living life where-you-live home Lorrie Moore
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. women life love he-knew his-life love-of-his-life meant-the-most one-person only-love missed felt Larry McMurtry
caefadc Every breath we draw wards off the death that constantly impinges on us.... Ultimately death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot and it plays with its prey only for a short while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst. life Irvin D. Yalom
8cce462 There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. i can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life - whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts. fate life Elizabeth Gilbert
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
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. loneliness life love Elizabeth Gilbert
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
a9bc24f "Well... "why" is a hard question to answer in any language." life love why Elizabeth Gilbert
e15c297 "I had to do something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them generously and ate every bite of them - asking my body the whole while if it would please accept the satisfaction of a pound of fried potatoes in lieu of the fulfillment of lovemaking. My body replied, only after eating every bite of food: "No deal, babe." -- women life love longing Elizabeth Gilbert
f084d36 It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead. life the-past Billy Collins
6cb46bd I will walk without noise and I will open the door in darkness and I will death life everything-is-illuminated sad Jonathan Safran Foer
b474c51 That paper-- it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in. struggle life unemployment fight Markus Zusak
6e63d8b Are you looking at a dead man now? life Markus Zusak
3e03b2f Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots. meaning death life franny-billingsley find Franny Billingsley
87d67e9 Gabe, did you pray?' 'Sort of.' 'Me too. Do you believe?' 'No. Do you?' 'No.' 'I don't believe,' said Gabriel, 'But I have faith, if you know what I mean.' 'What in?' 'I don't know, life, carrying on, I suppose.' 'Yes. faith god life in-the-kitchen monica-ali Monica Ali
a9ee426 She says screens are the cigarettes of our age. They're toxic, and we're only going to realize the damage they're doing when it's too late. funny family friendship life starbucks sunglasses bully Sophie Kinsella
1e5711f We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others. compassion life landry pearl-in-the-mist v-c-andrews ourselves others worrying human-beings thoughtful V.C. Andrews
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
b378ce2 You can't save everyone. It's not an option. life choosing option save choose Darren Shan
36148aa As long as you're breathing, your story's still going. story living life ending Darren Shan
d3883a3 The real troubles with living is that living is so banal. living life James Baldwin
793aa4f I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. I felt it terribly strongly today. That my being alive and changing and having a separate mind and having moods and all that was becoming a nuisance. He is solid; immovabile, iron-willed. He showed me one day what he called his killing-bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass. hate death life prison John Fowles
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
a362d3b The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts. future life science-fiction Neal Stephenson
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. marriage life love nobel-prize quotes Günter Grass
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
8677916 Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out. life writers Jeanette Winterson
3ec0d1c Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. life truths perspective Jeanette Winterson
5eb9e81 Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the saem as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine. If the sun is shining, stand in it - yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass - they have to - because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning - a meaningful life. life Jeanette Winterson
39cd249 I asked them: Does it hurt? And the scar people nodded, yes. But it felt somehow wonderful, they said. For one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close. pain life Aimee Bender
ab2514e Don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore. life ray-bradbury self-help Ray Bradbury
abc4d93 Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years--about twelve of them--to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood. experiences literature reading life children-s-lit life-experiences children-s-literature development brains children childhood children-s-books E.L. Konigsburg
8abaca1 You know what's wrong with scientific power?... It's a form of inherited wealth... Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual Guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline. Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it. But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step... There is no discipline... no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature... A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits. responsibility science life meaning-of-life hard-work experience Michael Crichton
5360afd Be honest with yourself; set the alarm for the time the Real You will get up, not the Ambitious You, because the Ambitious You doesn't really exist. sleep funny humor life mornings Laurie Notaro
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. time life purpose Jeannette Walls
83b91bf Although I am unconvinced that I desire life, I am not yet ready to embrace death. fate living life Charles Stross
a158b28 And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky - so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime. life life-and-death Donna Tartt
51c47af If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers. nature learning life teacher parenting mistakes Randy Alcorn
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
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 live wrong meaning life love important purpose Mitch Albom
3df8499 For all that was happening to him, his voice was strong and inviting, and his mind was vibrating with a million thoughts. He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless'. life alive prove useless dying Mitch Albom
8fe830c "In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete. When they hunt for food, the Desana know the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that hole will be filled, they believe, by the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, there would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to goodbye, the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish. "It's only fair," he says." inspiration life-lessons life truths Mitch Albom
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." enlightenment death god life wisdom explanation meaning-of-life peace knowledge power life-after-death Mitch Albom
ac7f166 Eddie told her he had made things square and her eyebrows lifted and her lips spread and Eddie felt and old, warm feeling he had missed for years, the simple act of making his wife happy marriage life Mitch Albom
7307fb5 "The backside of mountain is a fight against human nature," he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up." life mountain mountains Mitch Albom
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. good-and-evil self-knowledge fear death life coming-of-age manhood evil Ursula K. Le Guin
842e005 "It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent "studying" the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world." time work life news prediction knowledge Nassim Nicholas Taleb
f5334e0 To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array. spirituality science life japanese quantum-mechanics meditation sense-of-self physics Ruth Ozeki
5915692 The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. thoughts relationships memories friends inspiration family death life love end memory nostalgia John Irving
01e1e07 "Old Korean adage, "Even jade has flaws." Or, in other words: Nothing in life is ever perfect." perfection life jade korean-quote perfection-seeking flaws Alan Brennert
ea07e09 All of life seems to me a strange dream about losing things you never had to begin with. About trying to find your glasses when you can't see because you don't have your glasses on. life Lorrie Moore
eb440ac The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. people happiness life Elizabeth Gilbert
2026f47 ... people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. life Elizabeth Gilbert
4b18ce2 But I was always coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen. spirituality life philosophy Elizabeth Gilbert
316a08c "One by one, the thoughts and memories of sadness raised their hands, stood up to identify themselves. I looked at each thought, at each unit of sorrow, and I acknowledged its existence and felt (without trying to protect myself from it) its horrible pain. And then I would tell that sorrow, "It's OK. I love you. I accept you. Come into my heart now. It's over."..." pain sadness life Elizabeth Gilbert
907f30c "This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?" Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering." life love Elizabeth Gilbert
0579b2b Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons - sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish. life parenthood Elizabeth Gilbert
87be22f But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with thick, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein. personality life Elizabeth Gilbert
69440dd Devotion is diligence without assurance. life Elizabeth Gilbert
fb34205 The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing - Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood. spirituality life Elizabeth Gilbert
afa5dd7 You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will. life Elizabeth Gilbert
d1d279a Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The kundalini shakti - the supreme energy of the divine - will take you there. perfection spirituality life energy Elizabeth Gilbert
96a9d67 I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new. life Elizabeth Gilbert
aab80f3 "Once you look at your problems as "workout situations," they take on a whole new aspect." inspiration life the-laws-of-love self-help Chris Prentiss
79f4f8c [I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. meaning life storytelling Samuel Beckett
92a5349 grace is a small white butterfly, and life is a semi trailer careening up 101. life Anne Lamott
1d116e4 As she rode, she tried to tell herself something. / You don't deserve to be this happy, Liesl. You really don't. / Can a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick? hope life Markus Zusak
49c9c25 Well, have you even tried again? You can't just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it - despite your past mistakes. world life try-again new-world life-lesson mistake Markus Zusak
983b6ca I earned a mater's degree in journalism and took the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs. writer work life journalism fame job Mitch Albom
5016ade If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. reading life Roxane Gay
54a4919 "Each time we talk, he listens to me ramble, then he tries to pass on some sort of life lesson. He warns me that money is not the most important thing, contrary to the popular view on campus. He tells me I need to be "fully human." He speaks of the alienation of youth and the need for "connectedness" with the society around me." ramble money youth human life connect society talk lesson Mitch Albom
bf34f12 Remember that you own what happened to you. writing life ownership Anne Lamott
ea13bd0 The priest's work, the priest's service, was understood as an act of worship. This was God's desire at Sinai - that everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving each other. jesus humanity life inspirational serving-god serving-others Rob Bell
652073d We are among the first peoples in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given, a matter of kin and tribe, like hair color and hometown. But the very fluidity of this--the possibility of choice that arises, the ability to craft and discern one's own spiritual bearings--is not leading to the decline of spiritual life but its revival. It is changing us, collectively. It is even renewing religion, and our cultural encounter with religion, in counterintuitive ways. I meet scientists who speak of a religiosity without spirituality--a reverence for the place of ritual in human life, and the value of human community, without a need for something supernaturally transcendent. There is something called the New Humanism, which is in dialogue about moral imagination and ethical passions across boundaries of belief and nonbelief. But I apprehend-- with a knowledge that is as much visceral as cognitive-- that God is love. That somehow the possibility of care that can transform us-- love muscular and resilient-- is an echo of a reality behind reality, embedded in the creative force that gives us life. human choice faith spirituality religion god life love wisdom moral-imagination new-humanism nonbelief life-force tribe diversity reverence energy community belief ethics mystery ritual Krista Tippett
c4af3c8 It's never hard to act ordinary if you feel ordinary. heaven life ordinary Mitch Albom
ba13855 "Look to the east," she said, "for always, while the light dies in the west, there is the promise of rebirth from the east." hope life rebirth Marion Zimmer Bradley
49fcc37 ..And because he was still able to move his hands - Morrie always spoke with both hands waving - he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life. ill passion death life hands wait decision way-of-life Mitch Albom
cb623f8 He didn't remember the very first time he actually died very well. It wasn't as bad as remediation, but he remembered being afraid and worried... and when he found himself alive again a few hours later with Mearth's wild green eyes peering down at him, he remembered still being afraid and worried. It was strange, he thought, to be afraid of being alive... but being alive was worse than being dead in his mind. pain suffering fear death life alive green worry memory Rebecca McNutt
0592618 You can't even communicate in English. Real life is not a series of levels. family friendship life starbucks sunglasses bully Sophie Kinsella
d54bdd0 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? life wasted-time Mitch Albom
bb2d62d Here had lived an elder race, to which we look back with disquietude. The country which we visit at week-ends was really a home to it, and the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearnings for love, have their deepest expression in the heart of the fields. death life love e-m-forster howards-end countryside parting E.M. Forster
c0b2d17 "Morrie likes the nickname. "Coach," he says. "All right, I'll be your coach. And you can be my player. You can play all the lovely parts of life that I'm too old for now." friendship life nickname student old young Mitch Albom
6bea6d2 So we gave the afternoon some sanity after all and I wonder, Uncle Andrew, is life sane, as we tried to make it? Or is it insanity, as it was yesterday on the Gerard plantation? And why don't more people try to make it sane? Or if it is full of sanity for them, why do they try to rip that sanity to pieces and impose their form of insanity? Can you help me understand? sanity life Ann Rinaldi
5751545 Adulthood's full of ghosts... High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially. sleep life Emily St. John Mandel
abe1b96 Don Ricardo wanted a successor worthy of himself. Jorge would always be cocooned in the privileges of his class, hiding from his mediocrity in creature comforts. Penelope, the beautiful Penelope, was a woman, and therefore a treasure, not a treasurer. Julian, who had the soul of a poet, and therefore the soul of a murderer, fulfilled all the requirements. It was only a question of time. life poetic Carlos Ruiz Zafón
590300b This life you cry up so much is what I wanted to extinguish by suicide, whereas my dream, my dream--oh, it has revealed to me a great, new, regenerated intensity of life! suicide life revelation Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6a8ad5a I had also developed my own culture. Work. Over the years, I had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side. live work life important culture Mitch Albom
f3f43a2 "Morrie closed his eyes. "I know, Mitch. You mustn't be afraid of my dying. I've had a good life, and we all know it's going to happen. I maybe have four or five months." ill live good life months dying Mitch Albom
908bc25 Eddie admitted that some of his life he'd spent hiding from God, and the rest of the time he thought he went unnoticed. life Mitch Albom
3d3af04 Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? life L.M. Montgomery
96b2e45 Life is sacrifice and risk taking, and nothing that doesn't entail some moderate amount of the former, under the constraint of satisfying the latter, is close to what we can call life. If you do not undertake a risk of real harm, reparable or even potentially irreparable, from an adventure, it is not an adventure. risk sacrifice life risk-taking harm Nassim Nicholas Taleb
b799f25 I write all this with respect for the possibility that rather than some kind of contact with the consciousness of my donor's heart, these are merely hallucinations from the medications or my own projections. I know this is a very slippery slope.... What came to me in the first contact....was the horror of dying. The utter suddenness, shock, and surprise of it all....The feeling of being ripped off and the dread of dying before your time....This and two other incidents are by far the most terrifying experiences I have ever had.... What came to me on the second occasion was my donor's experience of having his heart being cut out of his chest and transplanted. There was a profound sense of violation by a mysterious, omnipotent outside force.... ...The third episode was quite different than the previous two. This time the consciousness of my donor's heart was in the present tense....He was struggling to figure out where he was, even what he was....It was as if none of your senses worked....An extremely frightening awareness of total dislocation....As if you are reaching with your hands to grasp something...but every time you reach forward your fingers end up only clutching thin air. life organ-transplants soul Mary Roach
a70dfb9 "The past is what it is--good and bad, it's written and unchanging. And there's solace to be had in that." Tears pricked her eyes. "What do you mean?" There was a long pause. "The good parts are more luminous because you can trust them. And the bad parts can't get any more tragic for precisely the same reason. The past is safe because it is indelible." past life J.R. Ward
513a4a4 I mean, what is this life of ours supposed to be for? Are we to spend it identifying each other with catalogues, like tourists in an art gallery? Or are we to try to exchange some kind of a signal, however garbled, before it's too late? life chrisopher-isherwood Christopher Isherwood
e28638c I see dull people as projects ... to be reformed people life project reform psychology Ben Elton
9347a7e Death is not in the nature of things; it is the nature of things. nature life John Fowles
36e6162 That was the thing about life. Habit and routine made things feel permanent, but that was all an illusion based on the very flimsy foundation of repetition. Change and chaos was a far better bet to put your faith in. At least you would never be surprised when things went tits up. life J.R. Ward
e4d9c1b "True enough. I say this all the time. Trez looked at his hands. "I didn't ask for this." "No one asks for life." The executioner hiked iAm's body up higher. "And sometimes they do not ask for death..." life-and-living life life-quote J.R. Ward
5300b72 She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn't as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses - the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle. life Kate Atkinson
1db6b19 When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week. coping life-lessons life worry food Robin McKinley
e2270bb Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood. metaphor reassurance life poetic-prose wintergirls poetic recovery Laurie Halse Anderson
7c349f6 "You are familiar, no doubt, with Sebastiano del Piombo's huge painting "The Raising of Lazarus", which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges, and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people -- presumably the neighbours -- cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. Hid grave-clothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously, and seem to confer; what he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly censorious. Here -- in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud --one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman -- Mary, or maybe Martha -- is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched: so many round down, five to go." life life-after-death Hilary Mantel
943d776 It is not so important, what happens to the body. I have led in some ways a blessed life. God has been good and not tested me. Now he does I cannot fail him. I have been vigilant over my heart, and I have not always liked what I have found there. If it comes into the hands of the hangman at the last, so be it. It will be in God's hands soon enough. life Hilary Mantel
7853545 Let me first talk about our brains as a personal radio telescope. Let me talk first about its wonderful built-in wiring for tuning out the static of our civilization in order to better tune in its symphony. life development E.L. Konigsburg
749499b Somewhere Dogen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don't remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fully aware and alive. death life Ruth Ozeki
f927859 I'm not against anyone fastening their life to an event of some significance and that way making themselves significant. God knows, we need what footholds we can find on the glass mountain of our existence. Trouble is, you climb and climb, and around middle age, you discover you have spent all the time in the same spot. You thought you were going to be somebody until you slip down into the nobody that you are. I'm telling you because I know. existence life significance middle-age insignificance Jeanette Winterson
627c7b3 Every day in my consultancy, I meet men and women who are out of their minds. That is, they have not the slightest idea who they really are or what it is that matters to them. The question 'How shall I live?' is not one I can answer on prescription. literature life Jeanette Winterson
293a6a1 I like to see the people arriving. I like to imagine their lives. It keeps me from thinking too much about my own. A man shouldn't be too introspective. It weakens him. That is the difference between Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. I'm a Hemingway man myself although I don't believe it is right to hunt lions. life tennessee-williams hunting thinking lives introspection Jeanette Winterson
d8405cc I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people's emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. life Jeanette Winterson
23ce622 Kazu pronadi svrhu u zivotu i ostvari je. Ali katkad, tek nakon sto ga prozivis, uvidis da je zivot imao svrhu, lako moguce onu o kojoj nisi nikad ni razmisljao. life životna-svrha život purpose Khaled Hosseini
52c16f1 Last day I saw him human, he was sad about the world. sadness life Aimee Bender
3ed0066 Look at it this way, child, life is a magic show, or should be if people didn't go to sleep on each other. Always leave folks with a bit of mystery, son. imagination life watchufulness mystery Ray Bradbury
3f02975 Or we'll go that way. Or we'll walk on the highways now, and we'll have time to put things into ourselves. And some day, after it sets in us a long time, it'll come out of our hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right. We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. travel strength life inspirational experience Ray Bradbury
597ca16 If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks. nature books learning life plants insects knowledge school Michael Crichton
b168da8 When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there.. whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time. writer life big-girls-don-t-cry novel Jennifer Weiner
7888611 We're brought up to expect a happy ending. But there are no happy endings. There's only death waiting for us. We find love and happiness, and it's snatched away from us without rhyme or reason. We're on a deserted space ship careening mindlessly among the stars. The world is Dachau, and we're all Jews. happiness life Sidney Sheldon
a956a82 And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse--a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred--about my whole life. life self-pity the-sense-of-an-ending remorse regret self-hatred Julian Barnes
851c9f3 ...Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. marriage life love commitment interesting faithfulness enjoyment partners Frances Hodgson Burnett
a54eeab What did you give to the city, Montag? Ashes. What did the others give to each other? Nothingness. life Ray Bradbury
c40f7a1 So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. hate fear life Ray Bradbury
9d59e5e There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving kindness in meditation or in one's life. It is an ongoing, ever-expanding realization of interconnectedness. It is also its embodiment. When you can love one tree or one flower or one dog or one place, or one person or yourself for one moment, you can find all people, all places, all suffering, all harmony in that one moment. Practicing in this way is not trying to change anything or get anywhere, although it might look like it on the surface. What it is really doing is uncovering what is always present. Love and kindness are here all the time, somewhere, in fact, everywhere. Usually our ability to touch them and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are truly separate and alone. (...). Make sure that you are not to help anybody else or the planet. Rather, you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance. illusion kindness compassion life love all-people all-places expanding honouring opening-to-pain uncovering unlimited well-wishing everywhere interconnectedness touched loving loving-kindness mindfulness realisation presence meditation harmony awareness Jon Kabat-Zinn
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