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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| dea4e3c | And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way. | Hanif Kureishi | ||
| 1eef1b1 | A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray. Which expla.. | conduct perception | Alain De Botton | |
| 9c99326 | Christianity had, in Nietzsche's account, emerged from the minds of timid slaves in the Roman Empire who had lacked the stomach to climb to the tops of mountains, and so had built themselves a philosophy claiming that their bases were delightful. Christians had wished to enjoy the real ingredients of fulfilment (a position in the world, sex, intellectual mastery, creativity) but did not have the courage to endure the difficulties these good.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2b7dedf | we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide. | Alain de Botton | ||
| fc7c9d1 | After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited--long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms--what they should prop.. | career-counseling meaning mistakes work | Alain de Botton | |
| 64bf233 | There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a way which was so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. But he shouldn't regret this entirely, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man - so far as any of us can be wise - unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that u.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 0fa1654 | The High Places," answered the Shepherd, "are the starting places for the journey down to the lowest place in the world. When you have hinds' feet and can go 'leaping on the mountains and skipping on the hills,' you will be able, as I am, to run down from the heights in the gladdest self-giving and then go up to the mountains again. You will be able to mount to the High Places swifter than eagles, for it is only up on the High Places of Lov.. | Hannah Hurnard | ||
| c733b8a | There are no obstacles which our Savior's love cannot overcome. The High Places of victory and union with Christ can be reached by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by laying down of our own will and accepting His. The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief, and pain, and of finding them transformed into something incomparably precious; these are the l.. | Hannah Hurnard | ||
| b10abd3 | We all think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 4a6c20d | Yet here we are, two children and a broken promise later, standing before each other, just the way we stood that day at the alter, with equal parts love and hope. And once again, I close my eyes, ready to take a leap of faith, ready for the long, hard road ahead. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but then again, I never really did. | Emily Giffin | ||
| a905093 | So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it. | sex | Emily Giffin | |
| 192cef2 | but i am content to live in the moment, and allow myself the daily pleasure of obsessing. nothing lasts forever, i tell myself. especially the good stuff. although typically you aren't faced with a hard deadline | Emily Giffin | ||
| 1ad9d77 | Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last. | H. Rider Haggard | ||
| 6ff64b9 | It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way. | H. Rider Haggard | ||
| ff981a6 | May God us keep | William Blake | ||
| 95bb7bb | Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along t.. | william-lyon-phelps | Dorothy Parker | |
| 6a2bbf4 | The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. | heresy | William Blake | |
| 05ba72b | That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. | William Blake | ||
| fcaecb8 | It's hard to maintain both smack and crack habbits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments. | very-true | Irvine Welsh | |
| 7e3f2b5 | The trick was to consume as quickly as possible; in doing it this way there was a sense that the body could be cheated. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 279c896 | Some people spend years in counselling trying to cope with being fucked up. I just move on. The fucked-upness always goes. The conventional wisdom is that you're running away, you should learn to cope with being fucked-up. I don't hold with that. Life is a dynamic rather than a static process, and when we don't change it kills us. It's not running away, it's moving on. | counselling moving-on moving-on-and-letting-go | Irvine Welsh | |
| 304c67d | Everything is muffled and car-crash-like and I want to speak but she's looking through me and I'm looking through alcohol. We're nowhere near each other even as we stumble in tandem through our disintegrating lives. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| ee0a11d | Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? | politics scotland | Irvine Welsh | |
| aadae0e | Thing is, as ye git aulder, this character-deficiency gig becomes mair sapping. Thir wis a time ah used tae say tae aw the teachers, bosses, dole punters, poll-tax guys, magistrates, when they telt me ah was deficient:'Hi, cool it, gadge, ah'm jist me, jist intae a different sort ay gig fae youse but, ken?' Now though, ah've goat tae concede thit mibee they cats had it sussed. Ye take a healthier slapping the aulder ye git. The blows hit ha.. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 02f4d14 | But ah cannae even endorse these sentiments as they are at best peripheral tae the moment. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 8bcf806 | A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one. | Irvine Welsh | ||
| 571572d | High cunts are a big fuckin drag when yir feeling like this, because thir too busy enjoying their high tae notice or gie a fuck about your suffering. Whereas the piss-held in the pub wants every cunt tae git as ootay it as he is, the real junky (as opposed tae the casual user who wants a partner-in-crime) doesnae gie a fuck aboot anybody else. | junkie observations | Irvine Welsh | |
| 4dfecaa | This social worker lassie turns round n gies us a stroppy look. Ah jist smiles bit she looked away aw fuckin nippy likes. Disnae cost nowt tae be social. A social worker thit cannae be fuckin social; that's nae good tae nae cunt, thon. Like a lifeguard thit cannae fuckin swim. Shouldnae be daein that kinday joab. | humanity humor jobs | Irvine Welsh | |
| aac02fd | I'm glad our slivers of existence intersected in a Venn diagram between the crushing slabs of oblivion on either side of them | sex trainspotting | Irvine Welsh | |
| 42cd13a | Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history." | science time | Doris Lessing | |
| 0621da9 | When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth. | Leif Enger | ||
| ca7b7d8 | There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even in the camcorder, only in the heart. | memories moments reminiscence | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | |
| bd9fd5a | She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top.... | Michael Connelly | ||
| 4bc0b24 | He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company | mystery vietnam war | Michael Connelly | |
| 652f20f | Look at all the life in this," she said. "Every pip could become a tree, and every tree could bear another hundred fruits and every fruit could bear another hundred trees. And so on to infinity." I picked the picks from my tongue with my fingers. "Just imagine," she said. "If every seed grew, there'd be no room in the world for anything but pomegranate trees." -- | fruit infinite life nature pomegranate possibility | David Almond | |
| 0da5fc9 | Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that? | looking-closer | David Almond | |
| 06f207f | Can love help a person to get better?' I asked. | David Almond | ||
| 4a642ab | A squirrel flies in," said Dr. Meescham. "This I did not expect at all. It is what I love about life, that things happen which I do not expect. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, we left the window open for this very reason, even in the winter. We did it because we believed something wonderful might make its way to us through the open window. Did wonderful things find us? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But tonight it has happened! Something .. | open openness window | Kate DiCamillo | |
| 788d262 | Who can say what astonishments are hidden inside the most mundane being? | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| ecefe30 | I have learned how to love. And it's a terrible thing. I'm broken. My heart is broken. Help me. | kate-dicamillo | Kate DiCamillo | |
| 5132b8a | I bet you didn't think I'd come back. But here I am. I come to save you." Too late, thought Edward as Bryce climbed the pole and worked at the wires that were tied around his wrists. I am nothing but a hollow rabbit. Too late, thought Edward as Bryce pulled the nails out of his ears. I am only a doll made of china. But when the last nail was out and he fell forward into Bryce's arms, the rabbit felt a rush of relief, and the feeling of reli.. | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| 167b678 | Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannot always be sweetness and light. | Kate DiCamillo | ||
| 8e7d9b9 | To think that we might easily have gone through life not knowing each other, missing all this free flow of love and ideas and warmth and sharing... We share really almost everything. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child) | destiny fate friendship | Joan Reardon | |
| 7e80bcb | I rode all day. I cried all night. The moon didn't glow. The sun didn't rise. A comet blazed Between my eyes. West and South, Wind and rain. Every way is Just the same. Pray give me a box To hide inside. Pray give me a spade To dig my own grave. | Gail Carson Levine |