Famous Quotes Ipsum

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. art teaches nothing but the significance of life. i always give myself such very good advice, but i very seldom follow it. why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful? a day is a miniature eternity. never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. it's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. i don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. i wish i believed, as j. b. priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! a "bad night" is not always a bad thing. these qualities are rare enough in a world where sexual performance has become as obligatory as sexual abstinence - or the pretension to it - once was. the worst by-product of the so-called sexual revolution is the substitution of performance for passion. it is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of anna, vronsky, the railway station and death, or the meeting of beethoven, tomas, tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. for he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty. it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. the sun is always shining. even though clouds may come along and obscure the sun for awhile, the sun is always shining. the sun never stops shining. and even though the earth turns, and the sun appears to go down, it never stops shining. these things seem small and indistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds. i think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still. to live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else..

And may these characters remain / when all is ruin once again never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. when you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness..

All art is quite useless. i saw the angel in the marble and carved until i set him free. lolita is famous, not i. i am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable last name. i am a woman committed to / a politics / of transliteration, the methodology / of a mind / stunned at the suddenly / possible shifts of meaning - for which / like amnesiacs / in a ward on fire, we must / find words / or burn every now and then go away, even briefly, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer; since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power. peace begins with a smile. the robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief. is it oblivion or absorption when things pass from our minds? there has never been an answer. there never will be an answer. that's the answer. it is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of anna, vronsky, the railway station and death, or the meeting of beethoven, tomas, tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. for he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty. the body of b. franklin, / printer, / like the cover of an old book, / its contents torn out / and / stripped of its lettering and gilding, / lies here / food for worms, / but the work shall not be lost, / for it will, as he believed / appear once more / in a new and more elegant edition / revised and corrected / by the author. prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. all these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. and so i choose to go with you / as if the choice were mine to make listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies - nowadays this is described as 'taking an interest in politics'. st. john of the cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude's sake. so since i've been home, i've learned two important things: ethernet is a gift from god, and it just doesn't sound the same to listen to the indigo girls without two people singing along. i love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. i wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. every hour i am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my mouth. years ago i discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. all sanity is great madness, but the greatest madness of all is to live life the way it is, rather than as it should be..