Famous Quotes Ipsum

The artist's life is in his work, and this is the place to observe him. i saw the angel in the marble and carved until i set him free. if the person you're talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. it may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. 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. talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience. it takes two to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear. think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. any job a man can do to make his way in the world is a decent job as long as he works hard and does his best. god didn't put sweat on a man's body for no reason. he put it there so he could work hard, cleanse himself and feel proud. hard workin' folks only smell bad to some folks who have nothing better to do but stick their noses in the air. 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. wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. sleeping is curiously addictive. you are part of the world, but not in it, and somehow that just seems right. it seems enough. i've learned that fate only takes you so far. after that, it's up to you to make it happen. 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. 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. doing. what you'll discover will be wonderful. what you'll discover will be yourself. 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. 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. religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. i'll pretend this is real / 'cause this is what i like best janis joplin taught me about passion. 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." hollywood is a place where they'll pay you 50,000 dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul. these things seem small and indistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds. it is not good for all our wishes to be fulfilled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest. my piano is a universe. those eighty-eight keys arrange the seven planets in musical scales, an aural cosmos. a memory without a blot of contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight. life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it..

I would rather fix something more important than my hair. 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. the writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels. the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. can i follow you home and listen to you think? the greatest complexity is the greatest simplicity. the more "complex" a system is, the more simple is its design. indeed, it is utterly elegant in its simplicity. the master understands this. that is why a highly evolved being lives in utter simplicity. 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. 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. 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. compassion can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. what is a hero? primarily one who has conquered his fears. 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. from my rotting body, flowers shall grow and i am in them and that is eternity. prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. religion is a daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable. listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies - nowadays this is described as 'taking an interest in politics'. st. john of the cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude's sake. beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. the least we can do is try to be there. perfection is terrible; it cannot have children. it is not good for all our wishes to be fulfilled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. the earth laughs in flowers. to live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; to let the spiritual, unbidden, and unconscious grow up through the common. this is to be my symphony. seize the day. make your lives extraordinary. years ago i discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. thoreau once said most men lead lives of quiet desperation... don't be resigned to that. live life!.

Our collective will to resist what is unjust is like a fire that cannot be put out. advice is what we ask for when we know the answer but wish we didn't. so much of what i see reminds me of something i read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? 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. the writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels. words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience. it's strange that words are so inadequate. yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. the robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief. it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. 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. 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. it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. the creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport. prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. i shall not die of a cold. i shall die of having lived. 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. art thou pale for weariness / of climbing heaven and gazing on earth / wandering companionless... when christ said: "i was hungry and you fed me," he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. jesus himself experienced this loneliness. he came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. the same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. every human being in that case resembles christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger. to live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; to let the spiritual, unbidden, and unconscious grow up through the common. this is to be my symphony..