Famous Quotes Ipsum

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. writers aren't people exactly. or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. it's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers. i would rather be kicked with a foot than be overcome by a loud voice speaking cruel words. a single sun shines here and in the land where i was born, though we call it by different names. in the realm of idea, the great principles behind the forms that we see are the same. if you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ''good morning'' at total strangers. destiny is not what is already made; destiny is what we are making. many people think that we are in the hands of destiny, driven in whatever direction life desires or wills, but really, we are the masters of our destiny, especially from the moment we realize this fact. man is responsible for his rise and fall. it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. when the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish - it is then that you must not hesitate. it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. enough! or too much. great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. there exists a passion for comprehension, just as there is a passion for music. that passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most of us later on. most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons. one of the earliest lessons i learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back. i am young. i am younger each year at the first snow. when i see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then i am in love again and very young and i believe everything. christ is in the manger and santa in heaven. walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heart break. trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. the entertainment business. what voyeurs we all have become. a memory without a blot of contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment to conquer loneliness we shall each have to assume the sacred responsibility of becoming a complete person. and most of all, to define ourselves without always including someone else in the definition. life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it. 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..

To read a writer, for me, is not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company. one of the impressive qualities of charlotte brontë's heroines, the quality that makes them more valuable to the woman reader than anna karenina, emma bovary, and catherine earnshaw combined is their determined refusal to be romantic. i would rather be kicked with a foot than be overcome by a loud voice speaking cruel words. but surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect. and as archie knows, it's not like that. it's never been like that. one thing i've learned all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that. 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. sure, the world is full of trouble. but as long as we have people undoing trouble, we have a pretty good world. janis joplin taught me about passion. i am young. i am younger each year at the first snow. when i see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then i am in love again and very young and i believe everything. christ is in the manger and santa in heaven. what is life? it is the flash of a firefly in the night. it is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset..

All art is quite useless. once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. there is a certain kind of kid who is so in love with words that she kisses the pictures of authors on the jackets of books. i was one. all i ever wanted was to be a writer. though this yearning now seems like aspiring to be a blacksmith in the age of the automobile, my childhood image of what a writer did bestowed superhuman powers on the profession. a writer sat privately at her desk and made public things happen. the power was godlike. the sense of accomplishment had to be the same. making words slant across the page was like making rain. flowers grew in ink. hurricanes and revolutions were stirred up by the sound of pen scratching paper. she walks in beauty, like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies; / and all that's best of dark and bright / meet in her aspect and her eyes: / thus mellow'd to that tender light / which heaven to gaudy day denies if you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. and if tonight my soul may find her peace / in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, / and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower / then i have been dipped again in god, and new-created. have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully. nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous. it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. the whole difference between construction and creation is this; that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed, but a thing created is loved before it exists. as the last leaf falls it only symbolizes the end of the tree's cycle, not the end of the tree's life. so too, as we complete our life cycle, there is a new beginning as our souls journey onward. we say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. it never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance. i'll pretend this is real / 'cause this is what i like best the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. it's really a wonder that i haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. yet i keep them, because in spite of everything i still believe that people are really good at heart. i simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. ...love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds, / or bends with the remover to remove: / o no! it is an ever-fixed mark / that looks on tempests and is never shaken... i must pack my short life full of interesting events and creative activity. philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. i intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development..