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6acf21f ... bel far niente has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. There's another wonderful Italian expression: l'arte d'arrangiarsi - the art of making something out of nothing. The art of turning a few simple ingredients into a feast, or a few gathered friends into a festival. Anyone with a talent for happiness can do this, not only the rich. happiness life richness Elizabeth Gilbert
ac5aeb9 Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit that you can't catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. life time Elizabeth Gilbert
6612c36 ... the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity. life pleasure Elizabeth Gilbert
92c6f69 First of all, it's life. You don't win. life love olympics running Jennifer Weiner
4af6496 ... both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish... life love pleasure Elizabeth Gilbert
a1615f1 We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands. god life mortality Elizabeth Gilbert
bb4957a This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. joy life rituals spirituality Elizabeth Gilbert
0ebfa7e So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess - only then could I become The Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple, after all? irony life Elizabeth Gilbert
59bbf42 "Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself." -" -- life wise-men Elizabeth Gilbert
c8d6d5c It makes me wonder now, in middle age, if being spontaneous and kind and curious are all parts of our natural ability to swim. inspiration life life-energy Mark Nepo
d46715e "... "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it." death life teaching the-wise world Elizabeth Gilbert
4860021 Most people seem to turn off at some point in their lives. Maybe it's thirty or forty. For most people it's lots younger. They stop there. Stop growing or changing or learning or something. From that point on they're dead. banality compromise happy-thoughts life Katherine Dunn
4e603cf There came a time, however, when death ceased to be the enforcer of finitude and began to look, instead, like the last opportunity for radical transformation, the only plausible portal to the infinite. life Jonathan Franzen
abddbd3 I don't want eternal life. I want a little joy, a large amount of pleasure, and a swift death once I lose the appetite for either. life pleasure purpose David Gemmell
b9a4931 All things in the world are created for Man, yet all have two purposes. The waters run that we might drink of them, but they are also symbols of the futility of Man. They reflect our lives in rushing beauty, birthed in the purity of the mountains. As babes they babble and run, gushing and growing as they mature into strong young rivers. Then they widen and slow until at last they meander, like old men, to join with the sea. And like the soles of men in the Nethervoid, they mix and mingle until the sun lifts them again as raindrops to fall upon the mountains. humanity life water David Gemmell
b8e6c9f But my mother wanted her children to be educated by nuns and priests all dressed in black, the way it had been done down through the generations with her people. Taught by people who had a firm grasp of how big and awful the world could be. life nuns parochial-schools priests religion religious-education schools Edward P. Jones
2d05b53 I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die. irony life Markus Zusak
4735021 During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay. life loss love Miriam Toews
b5876f8 All summers take me back to the sea. There in the long eelgrass, like birds' eggs waiting to be hatched, my brothers and sister and I sit, grasses higher than our heads, arms and legs like thicker versions of the grass waving in the wind, looking up at the blue sky. My mother is gathering food for dinner: clams and mussels and the sharply salty greens that grow by the shore. It is warm enough to lie here in the little silty puddles like bathwater left in the tub after the plug has been pulled. It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. Out past the planets, far away from Uranus and the edge of our solar system, into the brilliantly lit dark where the things we don't know about yet reside. Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars. Like the silvery lace curtains of my bedroom being drawn from my window, letting in light, so the moon gently pulls back the layers of the year, leaving the best part open and free. So summer comes to me. life moon sea stars summer-begins Polly Horvath
5bcd89c She was a desperate woman with frailties just like her, temptations just like her, a woman who had needs, a woman who loved almost to the point of there being no more her anymore, a woman who probably cried too much, just like her, a woman afraid, wanting to believe rather than believing [...] faith family life love tears temptation woman Susan Vreeland
de10719 It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials - I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered - it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments. kiss life love moment time Susan Vreeland
b3d6b13 Before this I had always held back, had never lived freely, not with Pietro, not even with Palmira, but here, where nothing was known, I did not fear judgment, and because Father and I shared the same sensibilities, all the rigidness of my living melted and I felt myself coming into myself. If it was genuine, if it would last, it was a wonderful feeling. life purpose Susan Vreeland
48f8b4d Il dolore piu sincero si vive soltanto da soli. life loneliness pain Carlos Ruiz Zafón
af6d980 Tova e edva nachaloto, za da postignesh kakvoto i da bilo v zhivota. Prirodnata darba e kato silata na edin atlet. Chovek mozhe da se rodi s poveche ili po-malko sposobnosti, no vse pak nikoi ne stava atlet samo zashchoto se e rodil visok, silen ili b'rz. Trud't, opit't i tekhnikata - te sa tezi, koito s'zdavat atleta ili choveka na izkustvoto. Umeniiata, s koito idvash na bial sviat, sa prosto boepripasi. Za da postignesh neshcho s tiakh, e nuzhno da prev'rnesh uma si v tochno or'die. life the-angel-s-game zafon Carlos Ruiz Zafón
fea3d11 Because when a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with which nature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he can do. That's why, in former days, I often said to you: don't try to imitate the thinker or the ascetic man, but be yourself, try to be yourself. life purpose Hermann Hesse
faa063d Suffering is life. life suffering Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9c287f7 Inlauntrul tau salasluia o imagine pe care ti-o facusesi tu despre viata, o incredere, o cerinta anume, erai gata de fapte, erai gata sa suferi, sa te ssacrifici - pentru ca apoi, pas cu pas, sa-ti dai seama ca lumea nu cerea de la tine niciun fel de fapte si sacrificii sau ceva de genul asta, ca viata nu e un poem eroic cu roluri de eroi si alte lucruri dintr-astea, ci un salon confortabil pentru oamenii cu obiceiuri burgheze, in care individul se declara pe deplin multumit daca maninca si bea, daca isi soarbe cafeaua, daca impleteste ciorapi, joaca taroc si asculta muzica la radio. Iar cine vrea altceva, purtind in el insusi eroicul si frumosul, admiratia pentru marii scriitori sau admiratia pentru sfinti, nu-i decit un nebun si un fel de cavaler Don Quijote. life Hermann Hesse
41394a2 Auf diesem Platz hat schon mancher gedacht, hier ware der Ort fur ein tuchtiges Stuck Leben und Freude, hier musste etwas Lebendiges, Begluckendes wachsen konnen, hier mussten reife und gute Menschen ihre freudigen Gedanken denken und schone und heitere Werke schaffen. growth life nature place society Hermann Hesse
311cc4d They had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids' adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment... She'd been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn't her favor-ite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn't she just read the fucking thing with gusto and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her adult judgment and professional story opinions to a book her kid loved? Of course the child hero should always triumph! Who wanted a kids' book to feel like real life? Real life was fucking intolerable. child childhood hero judgment kid life reading Maile Meloy
ca613ba Ich war ein Suchender und bin es noch, aber ich suche nicht mehr auf den Sternen und in den Buchern, ich beginne die Lehren zu horen, die mein Blut in mir rauscht life self teachings Hermann Hesse
feafa69 We make our own lives wherever we are, after all[...]They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here...everywhere...if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fullness. life lives L.M. Montgomery
1a2e836 "I denounce the do-gooders, the feel-gooders, the "activist clubs," and anyone else who makes people feel like the problem is being taken care of. Trust me. The problem is not being taken care of." life satire Blake Nelson
d979d81 "For the grace of bearing life's inevitable evils is itself a good life philosophy A.C. Grayling
3d29fbb So that the smile was not so much an attitude to be taken to life as the nature of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence. life smile John Fowles
4cbbc26 At a certain point he learned the smarter play was to avoid the things that brought you low. depression life sadness Colson Whitehead
c2b565b People get rid of plenty when they move--sometimes they're changing not just places but personalities. castoffs furniture interior-decorating life lives moving personality Colson Whitehead
5b584ca A related point: The job of the imagination, in making a story from experience, may be not to gussy the story up but to tone it down. The fact is, the world is unbelievably strange and human behavior is frequently so weird that no kind of narrative except farce or satire can handle it. The function of the storyteller's imagination sometimes is simply to make it more plausible. fiction life storytelling writing Ursula K. Le Guin
d39ed44 "Alecto, have you noticed how downhill this little island is becoming?" Mandy questioned sadly. "All these organic food stores and yoga studios and cellular phone towers... Cape Breton was one of the only places left where it still had that nostalgic small town atmosphere but now... I've only been away for a year, how could things have changed so quickly? I mean, how can the world accept it?" "C'est la vie," said Alecto, looking extremely tired as he stared out the window at the late November maple keys fluttering down from vibrantly red trees lining the streets on either side of the windshield." cape-breton car cell-phone change digital drive environmental life modernity nostalgia nova-scotia organic street technology tower windshield yoga Rebecca McNutt
47b80d0 To a life of quiet desperation... and not leading it. desperation freedom life quiet wealth witty Rebecca McNutt
2eaabb5 And that would be my method of locomotion, the Lion concluded. Not diplomas earned, but friendships bungled. Campaigns aborted. Errors in judgment and public humiliations. journey life locomotion Gregory Maguire
f2de49c Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies. death life Gregory Maguire
d1c397f It's been a long, rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness. life possibility Gregory Maguire
899eef4 "Tell yourselves whatever you'd like, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true," Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. "Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble." "You can't do this, it's wrong," Mandy insisted. "You don't have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with," Mearth icily declared. "...Do what she says, Mandy Valems...." Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth. "I can't," said Mandy. "...Go away!" Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don't ever come back here!" "I...." Mandy started, looking totally shocked. "I said I hate you, don't you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!" Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren't for her eyes, she would've looked like a person. "That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her," she disappointedly exclaimed. "I do love her, she's my friend, and that's why I said that stuff to her," Alecto replied forlornly. "None of it's true, I don't hate her at all... but I know what's going to happen and I don't want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her... can you explain to her after... why I said all that to her?" death depression dog dying earth environment faith friendship grief help hope illness life loss love nova-scotia pollution rescue Rebecca McNutt
adad2b2 Esli ty khochesh' pomoch' tvoemu veteranu, izbegai tserkvei, pripisyvaiushchikh zlo potustoronnim silam - naprimer, d'iavolu, soblazniaiushchemu liudei ili vseliaiushchemusia v nikh. Delo, v chastnosti, v tom, chto, predstavliaia sebia zhertvoi vneshnego vozdeistviia (<>), chelovek ne mozhet vyrabotat' zreloi samootsenki, predpolagaiushchei razvitie i obogashchenie ot zhiznennogo opyta. Peishens Meison. <> life Tim O'Brien
3c4410e Produmyvaia detali, Ueid neozhidanno proniksia novym, ugriumym sochuvstviem k ottsu. Vot, znachit, kak ono bylo. Khodish', delaesh' svoi dela. Nesesh' etu noshu, zamurovyvaesh' sebia v molchanie, priachesh' adskuiu pravdu ot vsekh ostal'nykh i bol'shuiu chast' vremeni ot sebia tozhe. Nikakoi teatral'nosti. Grebesh' sneg, okolachivaesh'sia v politike ili torguesh' v iuvelirnom magazine; periodicheski ishchesh' zabveniia>>, predaesh' nastoiashchee kazhdym vdokhom iz puzyria s prognivshim proshlym. A potom v odin prekrasnyi den' obnaruzhivaesh' bel'evuiu verevku. Izumliaesh'sia. Podtaskivaesh' musornyi bak, vlezaesh' i podtsepliaesh' sebia k vechnosti, slovno vkliuchaesh'sia v elektricheskuiu set'. Ni zapisok, ni skhem - nikakikh ob'iasnenii. V chem iskusstvo i sostoit - iskusstvo ottsa, iskusstvo Keti: velichestvennyi perekhod v oblast' chistoi, vseob'emliushchei Tainy. Ne nado putat', podumal on, absoliutnoe zlo s neschastlivym detstvom. Uznat' - znachit razocharovat'sia. Poniat' - znachit byt' predannym. Vse zhalkie <> i <>, vse nizmennye motivy, vse abstsessy dushi, vse otvratitel'nye melkie urodstva lichnosti i istorii - ne bolee chem rekvizit, kotoryi ty priachesh' do samogo kontsa Pust' publika zavyvaet vo t'me, potriasaet kulakami, pust' odni krichat - Kak? , drugie - Pochemu? life suicide Tim O'Brien
8272e60 Quote by Robert, a garcon who accepted a 'fat envelope' to leave the Balzar: Anyway it is only in moments of crisis that we find lucidity about ourselves--though only after the crisis is over. Still, that's enough lucidity for anyone. Anyway, it is all the lucidity that life will give you. The crucial thing is that is was _our choice._ We made it. We _chose_ to leave. /293 crisis life lucidity Adam Gopnik
771e094 Arthur said, You must know that you don't love children for being good or bad. I know you know that. Why do you love them? Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don't know what's coming and maybe you do. children life Jane Smiley
5336506 Sometimes I wish it has been you. life love olympics running Jennifer Weiner
85ffd9b I'm saying that it's a big decision. Your first love is important. It's part of your story The story you'll tell yourself, the one you'll tell about yourself, for the rest of your life. life love olympics running Jennifer Weiner
4469757 The afternoon had passed to a ghostly gray. She was struck by the immensity of things, so much water and sky and forest, and after a time it occurred to her that she'd lived a life almost entirely indoors. Her memories were indoor memories, fixed by ceilings and plastered white walls. Her whole life had been locked to geometries: suburban rectangles, city squares. First the house she'd grown up in, then dorms and apartments. The open air had been nothing but a medium of transit, a place for rooms to exist. growing-up home house indoors lake life nature rooms sky thought Tim O'Brien
8d560a7 A lot of who you were in middle age was determined before you had a chance to manipulate, control, or eve understand the things around you. It was no mystery, he thought, why some old people's minds returned to their youth; the wonder of those years, the discoveries, the first experience with the dirty secret of death, and the first stirrings of lust and love were indelible, drawn in luminous colors on clean canvas. Indeed, the first sex act was so mind-boggling that most people could still remember it clearly twenty, thirty, sixty years later. humor inspirational life love lust old romance science sex wisdom Nelson DeMille
f3d0a8c But as I try and understand how life works--and why some people cope better than others with adversity--I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream... coping happiness life love-of-life Jeanette Winterson
6650d66 Your friends will still be your friends, if they're good friends. life love olympics running Jennifer Weiner
26984ba "No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about, and what people should do with it. Oh, there have been lots of brilliant guesses. But honest, educated people have to identify with them as such--as guesses. What are guesses worth? Scientifically and legally, they are not worth doodley-squat. As the saying goes: "Your guess is as good as mine." The guesses we like best, as with so many things we like best, were taught to us in childhood--by people who loved us and wished us well. We are reluctant to criticize those guesses. It is an ultimate act of rudeness to find fault with anything which is given to us in a spirit of love. So a modern, secular education is often painful. By its very nature, it invites us to question the wisdom of the ones we love. Too bad. I have said that one guess is as good as another, but that is only roughly so. Some guesses are crueler than others--which is to say, harder on human beings, and on other animals as well. The belief that God wants heretics burned to death is a case in point. Some guesses are more suicidal than others. The belief that a true lover of God is immune to the bites of copperheads and rattlesnakes is a case in point. Some guesses are greedier and more egocentric than others. Belief in the divine right of kings and presidents is a case in point. Those are all discredited guesses. But it is reasonable to suppose that other bad guesses are poisoning our lives today. A good education in skepticism can help us to discover those bad guesses, and to destroy them with mockery and contempt. Most of them were made by honest, decent people who had no way of knowing what we know, or what we can find out, if we want to. We have one hell of a lot of good information about our bodies, about our planet, and the universe--about our past. We don't have to guess as much as the old folks did. Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, "Sir, you did not give us enough information." I would add to that, "All the same, Sir, I'm not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information." life meaning-of-life secular-education skepticism theories wisdom Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
7f8ebbb Ia ZhERTVA TsEPI NESChASTNYKh SLUChAINOSTEI, KAK I VSE MY. life Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
abd302c Vi rendete conto che tutta la grande letteratura - Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Addio alle armi, La lettera scarlatta, Il segno rosso del coraggio, l' Iliade e l' Odissea, Delitto e castigo, la Bibbia e The Charge of the Light Brigade di Tennyson - parla di che fregatura sia la vita degli esseri umani? (Non e liberatorio che qualcuno lo dica chiaro e tondo?) inspirational life literature Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
ea639a3 Her favourite song was 'God Has Blotted Them Out,' which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn't like anyone and she just didn't like life. Life was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre-death experience. death god life misanthropy religion revenge vengeance Jeanette Winterson
91da91d Sometimes, when you're losing someone, you hang on to whatever tradition you can. life Mitch Albom
b17282c Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. life Mitch Albom
2e3fd39 People scooped up these tabloids, devoured their gossip.. But now, for some reason, I found myself thinking about Morrie whenever I read anything silly or mindless. I kept picturing him there, in the house with the Japanese maple.. counting his breath, squeezing out every moment with his loved ones, while I spent so many hours on things that meant absolutely nothing to me personally. gossip ill life live love moment quality senseless Mitch Albom
66d6f11 I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with a fork, picking at a piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the same calm breeze that soothed me back in college. dying ill life live past pity presence struggle Mitch Albom
4c888e0 I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that? death dying ill life live love Mitch Albom
b80c457 I wrote articles about rich athletes who, for the most part, could not care less about people like me. .. My days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied. What happened to me? change life time unsatisfied work Mitch Albom
dbd4efd Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places. idealism ideas life live money thoughts work young Mitch Albom
f1f0324 Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places. idealism ideas life live thoughts university work young Mitch Albom
6dfa1d4 What happened to me? I asked myself. Morris's high, smoky voice took me back to my university years, when I thought rich people were evil, a shirt and tie were prison clothes, and life without freedom to get up and go - motorcycle beneath you, breeze in your face, down the streets of Paris, into the mountains of Tibet - was not a good life at all. What happened to me? free ideal life thought travel young Mitch Albom
fede91b And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem: 'My dear and loving cousin.. Your ageless heart as you move through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia..' .. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day. celebrate death life living-funeral love share Mitch Albom
64bf831 What a waste.. All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it. death funeral life tribute Mitch Albom
352fd44 There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live..' 'So far, I've been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don't know. But I'm betting on myself I will.' Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced. bitter choice cry death decision humility life live mourn Mitch Albom
029a897 A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip. final learn life watch Mitch Albom
cbbf16d "Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy." death excuse friend ill life workaholic Mitch Albom
23d8367 I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline. fast life pace work workaholic Mitch Albom
86f2213 After the funeral, my life changed. I felt as if time were suddenly precious, water going down an open drain, and I could not move quickly enough. No more playing music at half-empty night clubs. No more writing songs in my apartment, songs that no one would hear. funeral life perspective precious time urgency Mitch Albom
ca67019 The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate.. headed for New York City, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered, was not all that interested. I wandered around my early twenties, paying rent and reading classifieds and wondering why the lights were not turning green for me. fresh graduate life struggle world young Mitch Albom
39275d2 And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem: 'My dear and loving cousin.. Your ageless heart as you ,love through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia..' .. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day. death funeral life living living-funeral tribute Mitch Albom
cbced9a I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life. On the people who are coming to see me. On the stories I'm going to hear. On you - if it's Tuesday. Because we're Tuesday people. cry dying good life need people self story tuesday Mitch Albom
a6432b3 .. I thought about him now and then, the things he had taught me about 'being human' and 'relating to others;, but it was always in the distance, as if from another life.. .. The people who might have told me were long forgotten, their phone numbers buried in some packed-away box in the attic. busy forget life remember taught work Mitch Albom
ad9643d ..I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died.. which I figured was my natural fate. achieve control death fate happy life perspective thought Mitch Albom
729b85a "Mitch," he said, "the culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up in egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?" die ego encourage life missing reflect think Mitch Albom
5595150 He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems - the way they had always.. because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener. help life listen share sympathy Mitch Albom
49d4e9b That was the end of his driving.. That was the end of his walking free.. That was the end of his privacy.. And that was the end of his secret. change disease end ill life normal terminal Mitch Albom
f946fc4 .. when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I'm going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humour, with composure. cope courage death decision dignity humour life way-of-life withdraw Mitch Albom
df900ed In light of this, my visits with Morrie felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness. We talked about life and we talked about love. We talked about one of Morrie's favourite subjects, compassion and why our society had such a shortage of it. human kind life love shortage society talk visit Mitch Albom
2e89a2d Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas. death depress ideas life will Mitch Albom
e66083c Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair. dignity help ill life wheelchair Mitch Albom
68dd477 But I can sit here with my dwindling days and look at what I think is important in life. I have both the time - and the reason - to do that. dying end ill important life reason think time Mitch Albom
6e05e7b "A wrestling match.. Yes, you could describe life that way." So which side wins, I ask? He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth. "Love wins. Love always wins." life live love tug-of-war win wrestle Mitch Albom
2b1950a "One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself. "Have I told you about the tension of opposites?" he says. "Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle." life live opposites pull tension Mitch Albom
563ff6d "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Let it come in. We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, 'Love is the only rational act." enter give important life love rational receive soft wise Mitch Albom
fdffac1 "The culture we have does not make people feel ood about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it." -Morrie-" life Mitch Albom
6515ac9 Meanwhile, the great ash would rest where she lay, and mosses would creep over her trunk, and tiny creatures make their homes her dim hollows. Even in death she was a link in the great chain of the forest's being. earth fantasy-fiction life Juliet Marillier
4a8b2a4 And beauty is terror,' said Julian, 'then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?' 'To live,' said Camilla. 'To live forever,' said Bunny, chin cupped in palm. life Donna Tartt
f4c3210 I don't answer. I shut my eyes and hold my breath and hope whoever it is will think I'm not here and go home. life love olympics running Jennifer Weiner
4f96d0c Ia govoril o bespoleznosti iskusstva, no nichego ne skazal o tom oblegchenii, kotoroe ono sposobno prinesti. Uteshenie, kotoroe ia nakhozhu v takogo roda rabote uma i serdtsa, sostoit v sleduiushchem: tol'ko , v molchanii khudozhnika ili pisatelia, real'nost' mozhno perestroit', pererabotat' i zastavit' povernut'sia znachimoi storonoi. Obychnye nashi postupki sut' ne chto inoe kak deriuga, pod kotoroi sokryto zlatotkanoe pokryvalo -- istochnik znachenii. Nas, khudozhnikov, zdes' ozhidaet schastlivaia vozmozhnost' primirit'sia posredstvom iskusstva so vsem, chto ranilo i unizhalo nas v obydennoi zhizni, i ne bezhat' ot sud'by, kak pytaiutsia delat' obychnye liudi, no zastavit' ee prolit'sia istinnym zhivym dozhdem -- voobrazheniem. Inache zachem by my muchili drug druga? life Lawrence Durrell
b14dec1 I believe it's never too late to change. I'm eighty-one years old, but I still think I can be a better person tomorrow than I am today. And that's what I'll believe until I run out of tomorrows. life Carl Hiaasen
2fe9c4d When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate--the genetic and neural fate--of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. gratitude inspirational life Oliver Sacks
d3d2080 Wenn einen das Schicksal nicht zum Lachen bringt, dann hat man den Witz nicht kapiert. humor life Gregory David Roberts
e2031a6 Fiecare bataie de inima omeneasca, este un univers de posibilitati. life universe Gregory David Roberts
561fa40 The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs. dying life war Richard Flanagan
2ffabb6 I keep seeing my life darting off in the different directions it could have taken, as chance and circumstance, temperament and desire, open and close, open and close gates, routes, roadways. And yet there feels like an inevitability to who I am--just as of all the planets in all the universes, planet blue, this planet Earth, is the one that is home. decisions directions inevitability life personality Jeanette Winterson
9c72548 But making the ugly hurt part human again is not an exercise for the well-meaning social worker in us. This is the most dangerous work you can do. It is like bomb disposal but you are the bomb. That's the problem--the awful thing is you. healing life recovery redemption self-help Jeanette Winterson
73f4be2 There is a sense of the human spirit as always existing. This makes our own death bearable. creativity death existence life Jeanette Winterson
3c0c7de In what way am I any better? She is smug. I am cynical. She is puffed-up. I am punctured. I watch her gamely finding the energy to thrash about on life's greasy surface, while I lie paralysed, croaking about another life I think I can see. life smugness Jeanette Winterson
b8aceae The planets are bodies in the solar system and so are we. You and I in elliptical orbs circling life. It is life we want, but we daren't come too close for fear it might burn us away, this life in its intensity. life orbiting orbits planets Jeanette Winterson
46c3414 Running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. I thought I might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way. escape fleeing life running Jeanette Winterson
9d24bc1 Perhaps this is how it is--life flowing smoothly over memory and history, the past returning or not, depending on the tide. History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities, surface towards us, then sink away. Some we hook out, others we ignore, and as the pattern changes, so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time, which returns everything, changes everything. history life meaning memory objectivity subjectivity time Jeanette Winterson
1ea4754 It is untenable to go through life as an exposed wound. hurting life triggers Roxane Gay
ef52db0 There's a chance that I'm not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didn't make, for a moment brush against each other. That I am still an evangelist in the North, as well as the person who ran away. Perhaps for a while these two selves have been confused. I have not gone forward or back in time, but across in time, to something I might have been, playing itself out. life Jeanette Winterson
850782b "Doing this was like wading and then throwing yourself into the lake for the first icy swim, in June. A sickening shock at first, then amazement that you were still moving, lifted up on a stream of steely devotion-- death life sorrow Alice Munro
8778139 He'd probably no more view his life as a story than he would view his life that of a sea cucumber. life Douglas Coupland
17d8eeb The business of living can steal away the wonder of life. life steal wonder M.J. Rose
7d99891 V nekotorom rode dazhe priiatno ostavat'sia v nevedenii otnositel'no togo, chto s nami proiskhodit do rozhdeniia ili posle smerti. Ili chto sluchitsia v nervnoe, nepredskazuemoe vremia mezhdu migom, kotoryi oboznachaet nashu gotovnost' k peremenam v zhizni, i momentom, kogda eti peremeny proiskhodiat. life Douglas Coupland
b574650 The pollenless trees were genomed to repel bugs and birds; the stagnant air reeked of insecticide. life revolutionary science David Mitchell
b63582a But death, too, had the power to awe, she knew this now-that a human being could be alive for years and years, thinking and breathing and eating, full of a million worries and feelings and thoughts, taking up space in the world, and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible. death feelings human human-beings life love meditation power silence thoughts worries years Jhumpa Lahiri
7b93544 One could say that the mechanism of metamorphosis is the only element of life that never changes. The journey of every individual, every country, every historical epoch, of the entire universe and all it contains, is nothing but a series of changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember. They give a structure to our existence. Almost all the rest is oblivion. I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves. existence life music transformation Jhumpa Lahiri
bafd469 "That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won't let you do it. You've got to say, "Well, to hell with you." And the cat says, "Wait a minute. He's not behaving the way most humans do." Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: "Well, what's wrong with you that you don't love me?" life Ray Bradbury
45bdb89 "Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory." life meaning-of-life Matthew Pearl
3f582cc Life is a matter of luck, and the odds in favor of success are in no way enhanced by extreme caution. -- WWII German U-Boat Commander Eric Topp life luck Robert Kurson
ddc0b05 Strange. Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid. life Ray Bradbury
dbc1b0f Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire, bacteria feel desire. Life is wanting. life Kim Stanley Robinson
defd5ec "So who else did you convince?" "Well, I got Joe to potty train himself, and then I convinced Anna to leave the kids at home and go with me on a vacation to Jamaica." boldness dreams funny life Kim Stanley Robinson
c5009d6 Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. ... And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe--its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It's a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it. cosmos life nature patterns viriditas Kim Stanley Robinson
805d02b I don't believe that death comes at the end of a life. I believe your death was there at your birth with you. It was the unknown presence. Every step of the road of your life that you take, your death is beside you. inspirational life John O'Donohue
8b64c61 One of the greatest sins is the unlived life, not to allow yourself to become chief executive of the project you call your life, to have reverence always for the immensity that is inside you. life John O'Donohue
f262576 The prospect of death in autumn, she said, was irrelevant next to its happy recognition of its participation in the life of the tree itself. gratefulness life David Guterson
922cff1 The mystery and art of living are as grand as the sweep of a lifetime and the lifetime of a species. And they are as close as beginning, quietly, to mine whatever grace and beauty, whatever healing and attentiveness, are possible in this moment and the next and the next one after that. attention awe beauty diversity enlightenment god grace humanity life life-force love mindfulness mystery on-being religion spirit wisdom wonder Krista Tippett
d9dd7c0 She had other favourite lines. Our gas oven blew up. The repairman came out and said he didn't like the look of it, which was unsurprising as the oven and the wall were black. Mrs Winterson replied, 'It's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.' That is a heavy load for a gas oven to bear. She liked that phrase and it was more than once used towards me; when some well-wisher asked how I was, Mrs W looked down and sighed, 'She's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.' This was even worse for me than it had been for the gas oven. I was particularly worried about the 'dead' part, and wondered which buried and unfortunate relative I had so offended. life Jeanette Winterson
c7191ab What exactly did Simone Weil mean when she said, When you have to make a decision in life, about what you should do, do what will cost you the most. Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who these people? decisions difficulty implications life Sigrid Nunez
7ed737e I confess to sudden rages. Walking in Midtown, rush hour's peak, people streaming in both directions, I find myself seething, ready to kill. Who are all these fucking people, and how is it fair, how is it even possible that all of them, these perfectly ordinary people, should be alive, when -- death grief life loss mourning rage Sigrid Nunez
e879776 "She was alone and destitute in a world of pointless carnage. By an eight-hundred-year-old Sepahrdic tradition she ad been since the age of twelve and a half "bogeret l'reshut nafsha"--an adult wit authority over her own soul. The Torah taught, Choose life. And so, rather than die of pride, Sofia Mendes sold what she had to sell, and she survived." judaism life strength survival-instinct Mary Doria Russell
a37000c Life is swimming to shore with cowboy boots on. life noir-fiction struggle Christopher G. Moore
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