Famous Quotes Ipsum

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. every child is an artist. the challenge is to remain an artist once he grows up. all good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. the only thing worth saying is what you really feel. think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. the people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them. what do you experience with your first mouthful of hot fudge sundae? its not surprising that we carry it over to describe the intensity of love and sex. besides, i didn't have anything to fear anymore. maybe all post-suicidals feel that way. it's really great - it gives you a real sense of, not bravery exactly, and not recklessness, quite, but something in between the two. if i'd survived my own best attempts at dying, it probably just wasn't in the cards for me to perish young. why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundations of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, every school. prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. and so i choose to go with you / as if the choice were mine to make pooh looked at his two paws. he knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which of them was the right, then the other was the left, but he never could remember how to begin. it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. we can't all, and some of us don't. that's all there is to it. there is something very wonderful in music. words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. it speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears; we know not how - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words. some things are true whether you believe them or not. he felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not now where he ended and she began. i know that a life without love is no life at 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... loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight. goodbyes always make my throat hurt . . . i need more hellos. to look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is. at last to know it, to love it, for what it is, and then, to put it away. leonard, always the years between us, always the years, always the love, always the hours.....

Art teaches nothing but the significance of life. change only takes place through action. action is eloquence. freedom lies in being bold. i could lay here and read all night. i am not able to fall asleep without reading. you have that time when your brain has nothing constructive to do so it rambles. i fool my brain out of that by making it read until it shuts off. i just think it's best to do something right up until you fall asleep. your daughter has a quick and witty tongue. what is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from the biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult to come by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become not merely unspoken but unspeakable.... all silence has a meaning. 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. that's the way things come clear. all of a sudden. and then you realize how obvious they've been all along. it's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy. 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. the cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy sunday afternoon. and so i choose to go with you / as if the choice were mine to make all humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual. 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. there is something very wonderful in music. words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. it speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears; we know not how - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words. little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting. maybe that's not exactly how it happened. but that's the way it should have happened. and that's the way i like to remember it. nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. the person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. his heart withers if it does not answer another heart. his mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. 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..

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. we turn, not older with years, but newer every day. the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. they must be felt with the heart. 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. everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. 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. 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. who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught tangled in a woman's body? 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. too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. it isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. i often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? suppose we could use one life, already ended, as sort of a rough draft for another? i think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light... we don't say everything that we could / so that we can say later / "oh, you misunderstood" prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. the very greatest mystery is in unsheathed reality itself. enough! or too much. great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. i say to mankind, be not curious about god. for i, who am curious about each, am not curious about god - i hear and behold god in every object, yet understand god not in the least. as to the way i've spent my money, i think it has done credit to my emotions, and i don't regret it. on occasion, i have calculated things to a very fine point, but you may well cease hoping that i will ever be practical in the accepted sense. i would sooner die. unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. we don't see things as they are - we see them as we are. the universe is made of stories, not atoms. where there is great love there are always great miracles. horror is shock, a time of utter blindness. horror lacks every hint of beauty. all we can see is the piercing light of an unknown event awaiting us. sadness, on the other hand, assumes we are in the know. 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. i always thought of myself as a house. i was always what i lived in. it didn't need to be big. it didn't even need to be beautiful. it just needed to be mine. i became what i was meant to be. i built myself a life. i built myself a house. both my wife and daughter think i'm this gigantic loser and they're right.