Famous Quotes Ipsum

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. when the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish - it is then that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. 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. be still and know that i am god. 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. even for me life had its gleams of sunshine. finish each day and be done with it. you have done what you could. some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. never judge a book by its movie. art thou pale for weariness / of climbing heaven and gazing on earth / wandering companionless... seize the day. make your lives extraordinary..

Once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. in tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. for she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels. she had read any number of them, from fielding to thomas mann. they not only offered her the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. it had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. it differentiated her from the others. lolita is famous, not i. i am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable last name. we all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough? the soul is an emanation of the divinity, a part of the soul of the world, a ray from the source of light. it comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, it goes out of it anew; it wanders in ethereal regions, it returns to visit.... it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal. when i have a terrible need of - shall i say the word? - religion, then i go out and paint the stars..

The artist's life is in his work, and this is the place to observe him. i would rather fix something more important than my hair. security is mostly a superstition. it does not exist in nature...life is either a daring adventure or nothing. freedom lies in being bold. one can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. now, what was tiring had disappeared and only the beauty remained. everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. the way i see it, the men that i'm with, whoever they are, it's like look, you have to accept that i like ice cream, and i know it shows up on my hips but if you can't accept that, then leave. go away. toodles. it is non-negotiable. mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves--that's the truth. we have two or three great moving experiences in our lives--experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. it was only the first of many occasions during those months that seemed to take place out of time, or in a historical moment i had yet to identify. 'when i was a kid,' said irie softly, ringing the bell for their stop, 'i used to think they were little alibis. bus tickets. i mean, look: they've got the time. the date. the place. and if i was up in court, and i had to defend myself, and prove i wasn't where they said i was, doing what they said i did, when they said i did it, i'd pull out one of those.' think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. the robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief. sleeping is curiously addictive. you are part of the world, but not in it, and somehow that just seems right. it seems enough. simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. a new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed. people living deeply have no fear of death. early in the novel that tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit tomas, anna meets vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. at the end of the novel, anna throws herself under a train. this symmetrical composition - the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end - may seem quite 'novelistic' to you, and i am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as 'fictive', 'fabricated', and 'untrue to life' into the word 'novelistic'. because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. i've learned that fate only takes you so far. after that, it's up to you to make it happen. do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain. when you get into a tight place and it seems you can't go on, hold on, for that's just the place and the time that the tide will turn. 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. we don't say everything that we could / so that we can say later / "oh, you misunderstood" 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. enough! or too much. all humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual. 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. there are two kinds of people: those who say to god, "thy will be done," and those to whom god says, "all right, then, have it your way." ...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....