Famous Quotes Ipsum

We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand. everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. we don't say everything that we could / so that we can say later / "oh, you misunderstood" i pray because i can't help myself. i pray because i'm helpless. i pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. it doesn't change god, it changes me. two paths diverged in a wood, and i - i took the one less traveled by. and that has made all the difference. in a cruel and imperfect world, she was living proof that god could still create perfection. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. i preach there are all kinds of truths, your truth and somebody else's. but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. you're all i notice in a crowded room. art thou pale for weariness / of climbing heaven and gazing on earth / wandering companionless....

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. the stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. change is an easy panacea. it takes character to stay in one place and be happy there. the moment of change is the only poem. the one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. the only thing worth saying is what you really feel. drop the question what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that fate allows you. this is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. interesting that the beliefs of others are labeled mere superstitions, mr. todd. ours we call religion. the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. even for me life had its gleams of sunshine. in memory, everything seems to happen to music. he who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how'. if we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms. it is beautiful that our lives coincided for so long. everybody loves a hero / an image to create / the antithesis of everything / inside ourselves we hate / but you'd better close your eyes / when it's time for them to die / because you'd hate to think the life you'd built upon them was a lie.

Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. our collective will to resist what is unjust is like a fire that cannot be put out. security is mostly a superstition. it does not exist in nature...life is either a daring adventure or nothing. when i get a little money, i buy books; and, if any is left, i buy food and clothes. it seems that whatever goes into my mouth makes me fat, just as whatever comes out of it embarrasses me. i have not lived as a woman. i've lived as a man. i've just done what i damn well wanted to and i've made enough money to support myself and i ain't afraid of being alone. on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth. 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. smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other -- it doesn't matter who it is -- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other. wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. 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. she thought now of the pink anemones waving in that water. like herself, when he'd first spied on her with her sensitive, fleshy tentacles of thought waving all around her, until he'd touched and made her draw up quickly into a stony fist. but he knew just how to touch her, speak to her, breathe on her, to draw her out again. physical pleasure was such a convincing illusion, and sex, the ultimate charade of safety. in languages that form the word 'compassion' not from the root 'suffering' but from the root 'feeling', the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. the secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with others' misfortune but also able to feel with him any emotion - joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. this kind of compassion therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imaginations, the art of emotional telepathy. in the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. i have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws ere i'll weep. a man can no more diminish god's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. oh help! i'd better go back. oh bother! i shall have to go on. i can't do either! oh help and bother! my religion is very simple. my religion is kindness. the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. all humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual. 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. as we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed. the earth laughs in flowers. i preach there are all kinds of truths, your truth and somebody else's. but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. i took us for better and i took us for worse / don't you ever forget it / now the steel bars between me and a promise / suddenly bend with ease / the closer i'm bound in love to you / the closer i am to free loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. are there not chapters in everybody's life that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history? years ago i discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. 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. for man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, perfectly alive..