Famous Quotes Ipsum

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. the blood jet is poetry, there is no stopping it. the writer should never be ashamed of staring. there is nothing that does not require his attention. it takes two to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear. truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness. everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. 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. 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. the realization that he was utterly powerless was like the blow of a sledgehammer, yet it was curiously as well. no one was forcing him into a decision. the whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend it's not. beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. the least we can do is try to be there. as we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed..

I would rather fix something more important than my hair. curiosity is braver than rage. exploration is a nobler calling than combat. the unknown beckons to us, singing its siren song and making our hearts pound with fear and desire. youth is wasted on the young. now, what was tiring had disappeared and only the beauty remained. love is a great beautifier. the moment of change is the only poem. i am not quite sure how writing changes things, but i know that it does. it is indirect - like the trails of earthworms aerating the earth. it is not always deliberate - like the tails of glowing dust dragged by comets. but it does have an effect on the cosmos. before things are written down they don't exist in quite the same way. the act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded. words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. metaphors are not to be trifled with. a single metaphor can give birth to love. on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth. to laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and ignore the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or redeemed by social condition; or to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. this is to have succeeded. a warm smile is the universal language of kindness. it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. it's awfully hard to be b-b-brave when you are only a very small animal. when i dare to be powerful / to use my strength / in the service of my vision / then it becomes / less and less important / whether i am afraid. the choice may have been mistaken - the choosing was not. i mean, even the most spiritual person loves to go shopping. 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. in memory, everything seems to happen to music. we shall not cease from exploration - and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started - and know the place for the first time. every now and then, everybody is entitled to too much perfection. we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. as we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed. i love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to men is felt to be so divine. it brings us nearer to the infinite. a life of self-indulgence, if led with a whole heart, may also bring a certain wisdom. the unexamined life is not worth living..

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. poets . . . create from the very depths of the collective unconscious, voicing aloud what others only dream. the feeling of sunday is the same everywhere: heavy, melancholy, standing still. like when they say, 'as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end.' music has been in my heart all the time, and poetry in my thoughts. 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. simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. no man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. is it oblivion or absorption when things pass from our minds? our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities, or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidence. 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. do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain. when i dare to be powerful / to use my strength / in the service of my vision / then it becomes / less and less important / whether i am afraid. i lay down on the parched ground and looked as hard as i could at the blue sky. i wanted to feel the sheerness of space, to somehow reach what was empty and quiet, to hold what was right beyond my grasp. bush thinks he is still living in the age of cowboys, and that the world is like texas with himself as sheriff. the primary and most beautiful of nature's qualities is motion. is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?.