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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7ed3b1d | We didn't want to waste this second chance-- | love | Craig Thompson | |
| 5678e08 | In silence, Bird reflected sadly on his wife's misconception of the nature of Swahili. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| a0fc0af | Can you tell me which is yours?" Standing at Bird's side, the nurse spoke as if she were addressing the father of the hospital's healthiest and most beautiful baby. But she wasn't smiling, she didn't even seem sympathetic; Bird decided this must be the standard intensive care ward quiz. Not only the nurse who had asked the question but two young nurses who were rinsing baby bottles beneath a huge water heater on the far wall, and the older .. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 6c3247f | Gradually, as wine turns to vinegar, Bird's consternation turned to fear, aureoles of fear spread around his eyes like deep rings: he felt himself turning into a frightened monocle monkey. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 0202c56 | Once a problem's solved, the things that have been plaguing you seem terribly stupid and trivial. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 2243ef9 | Bird's waking dream was harsh, the reverse face of the innocent dream that had ushered him into sleep, a thing armored in burrs that inspired anguish. Sleep for Bird was a funnel which he entered through the wide and easy entrance and had to leave by the narrow exit. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 0953728 | Peril-ridden and fragile, the imperfect human body, what a shameful thing it was! | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 80fc170 | Sometimes ego is suppressed on the ascent. Sometimes an idea is so powerful or timing is so perfect (or one is born into wealth or power) that it can temporarily support or even compensate for a massive ego. As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place. We know that empires always fall, so we must think about why--and wh.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 8fdb63b | His eyes, filled with tears and his own blood, are already blind to all things in reality, but the colossal chrysanthemum topped with a purple aurora illuminates the darkness behind his closed lids more radiantly than any light he has ever seen. His head nothing more than a dark void now, the blood all drained away, he is no longer certain whether the person awaiting him at the top of the stone steps is a certain party, but if he can crawl .. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| fc9e86c | Time doesn't move at all, I thought in irritation. Like a domestics animal, time doesn't move without human beings' strict supervision. Like a horse or a sheep, time won't move a step without grown ups' orders. We are a steady state in the stagnation of time. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| af506c5 | He grasped at a prescient feeling, akin to the dialectic of dreams, that this reunion could never come to pass, yet somehow--it most definitely would. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 11bb4b7 | You're right. I'm the old man who wasn't able to become one of those fish (however many there may have been) swimming eternally in the bluish-green light of the grotto beyond the crack in the rocks. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 25839f3 | Den emoun katallela proetoimasmenos gia to rolo tou patera ki etsi den mporesa n' apokteso ena phusiologiko paidi. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| c36e9e1 | Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 257d7a7 | It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We'd rather do basically anything else. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 11e3b64 | They were martyred. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints--how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! | Shūsaku Endō | ||
| 16526de | Stupefied he gazed at the old man who, naive as a child, returned his glance still rubbing his hands. How could he have recognized one who so utterly betrayed all his expectations? The man whom Valignano had called a devil, who had made the missionaries apostatize one by one--until now he had envisaged the face of this man as pale and crafty. But here before his very eyes sat this understanding, seemingly good, meek man. | Shūsaku Endō | ||
| fccb88a | The wisdom of peasants shows itself in their ability to pretend that they are fools. | Shūsaku Endō | ||
| 874c512 | But too often, we proceed like this . . . A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ______ ever. Be the youngest ______. The only one to ______. The "firstest with the mostest." The advice: Okay, well, here's what you'll need to do step-by-step to accomplish it. The reality: We hear what we want to hear. We do what we feel like doing, and despite being incredibly busy and working very hard, we accomplish very little. Or wors.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 7c9a87b | What matters is that you learn how to manage yourself and others, before your industry eats you alive. Micromanagers are egotists who can't manage others and they quickly get overloaded. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 0091fcd | that it seems wrong to take it slow. This is just our impatience. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn't going to hurry the journey along. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| f8fa5b8 | Stoicism as the ideal "personal operating system" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 102861e | Every culture has its own way of teaching the same lesson: Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal. It | Ryan Holiday | ||
| adc90dd | Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 31d8b46 | Well, anyway," said the constable at last, turning businesslike, "I got to take charge here. Get this feller into the house before he fries. I'm telling you now: if he don't make it, you're in a pickle, you people. Now, here's what we'll do. You," he said, pointing at Mae, "you got to come with me, you and the little girl. You got to be locked up right away; and the little girl, I got to get her home. The rest of you, you stay here with him.. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 5774659 | Miles said softly, "Ma. We'll get you out right away." "Sure, Ma," said Jesse. "Don't worry about me none," said Mae in the same exhausted voice. "I'll make out." "Make out?" exclaimed the constable. "You people beat all. If this feller dies, you'll get the gallows, that's what you'll get, if that's what you mean by make out." | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 29eb9b4 | And then Winnie said something she had never said before, but the words were words she had sometimes heard, and often longed to hear. They sounded strange on her own lips and made her sit up straighter. "Mr. Tuck," she said, "don't worry. Everything's going to be all right." The constable glanced heavenward and shook his head. Then, clutching his shotgun, he climbed up behind Winnie and turned the horse toward the path. "You first," he bark.. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 252197d | Mae Tuck must never go to the gallows. Whatever happened to the man in the yellow suit, Mae Tuck must not be hanged. Because if all they had said was true, then Mae, even if she were the cruelest of murderers and deserved to be put to death--Mae Tuck would not be able to die. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 4625a50 | Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short," she said calmly. "You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time." | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 55069d9 | Tuck and me, we got each other," she said, "and that's a lot. The boys, now, they go their separate ways. They're some different, don't always get on too good. But they come home whenever the spirit moves, and every ten years, first week of August, they meet at the spring and come home so's we can be a family again for a little while. That's why we was there this morning. One way or another, it all works out." She folded her arms and nodd.. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| b281682 | Those obsessed with glory attach their well-being to the regard of others, those who love pleasure tie it to feelings, but the one with true understanding seeks it only in their own actions.... Think on the character of the people one wishes to please, the possessions one means to gain, and the tactics one employs to such ends. How quickly time erases such things, and how many will yet be wiped away." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6:51, 5.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 2cd8ea5 | The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.61" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 113d7f8 | It is sad to consider how much time many people spend in the course of a day doing things they "have" to do--not necessary obligations like work or family, but the obligations we needlessly accept out of vanity or ignorance. Consider the actions we take in order to impress other people or the lengths we'll go to fulfill urges or sate desires we don't even question." | Ryan Holiday | ||
| c511141 | Winnie woke early next morning. The sun was only just opening its own eye on the eastern horizon and the cottage was full of silence. But she realized that sometime during the night she had made up her mind: she would not run away today. "Where would I go, anyway?" she asked herself. "There's nowhere else I really want to be." But in another part of her head, the dark part where her oldest fears were housed, she knew there was another sort .. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 87aa8b6 | How old are you, anyway?" she asked, squinting at him. There was a pause. At last he said, "Why do you want to know?" "I just wondered," said Winnie. "All right. I'm one hundred and four years old," he told her solemnly. "No, I mean really," she persisted. "Well then," he said, "if you must know, I'm seventeen." "Seventeen?" "That's right." "Oh," said Winnie hopelessly. "Seventeen. That's old." "You have no idea," he agreed with a nod. Winn.. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 24af07c | Afterward, when she thought about it, it seemed to Winnie that the next few minutes were only a blur. First she was kneeling on the ground, insisting on a drink from the spring, and the next thing she knew, she was seized and swung through the air, open-mouthed, and found herself straddling the bouncing back of the fat old horse, with Miles and Jesse trotting along on either side, while Mae ran puffing ahead, dragging on the bridle. Winnie .. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| a10680c | Winnie had her own strong sense of rightness. She knew that she could always say, afterward, "Well, you never told me to!" But how silly that would be! Of course it would never occur to them to include such a thing on their list of don'ts. She could hear them saying it, and almost smiled: "Now, remember, Winifred--don't bite your fingernails, don't interrupt when someone else is speaking, and don't go down to the jailhouse at midnight to .. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 36dbe0e | She's gone," he answered." | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 043a1cd | He knows you?" said Mae, her frown deepening. "But you didn't call out to him, child. Why not?" "I was too scared to do ," said Winnie honestly. Tuck shook his head. "I never thought we'd come to the place where we'd be scaring children," he said." | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 7143c29 | Wordy! I enjoy description--I like words, and words are the tools that writers use, just like paint is the tool that artists use. I think words are fun, and I have a lot of fun using them. I know that a lot of kids think my stories start very slowly, and I expect that's true. But that's the way I like to read stories, so when I'm writing them I can do what I want! I say that to kids in schools, and they are very generous--they say, "That's .. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| cf4dcb8 | I can't help what I dream. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| a211116 | A fresh breeze lifted Winnie's hair, and from somewhere in the village behind them a dog barked. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| b98a0da | And Winnie, laughing at him, lost the last of her alarm. They were friends, her friends. She was running away after all, but she was not alone. Closing | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 03ed365 | And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother's shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because--in spite of everything, she loved them. | Natalie Babbitt |