Famous Quotes Ipsum

Imagining something is better than remembering something. art teaches nothing but the significance of life. security is mostly a superstition. it does not exist in nature...life is either a daring adventure or nothing. everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. 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. poetry does not necessarily have to be beautiful to stick in the depths of our memory. when power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. when power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. when power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgement. it takes two to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear. you set up your place in my thoughts / moved in and made my thinking crowded. to find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. 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. 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. a prudent question is one half of wisdom. but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? in our minds we can understand the highest god, but so long as we are in human bodies living in this rich and varied world, we need images that we can see and touch and love. and each one of them shows us a part of that supreme power, and all the parts together give us a glimpse of the whole. so the people who insist there is only one god are right, and so are those who honor the many, but they are right in different ways. they say that god is everywhere, and yet we always think of him as somewhat of a recluse. surely a king who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory. 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. he felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not now where he ended and she began. if we could stay that way forever; if we could stay filled to the brim and floating toward the darkness, never suffocating or dying - . 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..

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. they must be felt with the heart. there is a certain kind of kid who is so in love with words that she kisses the pictures of authors on the jackets of books. i was one. all i ever wanted was to be a writer. though this yearning now seems like aspiring to be a blacksmith in the age of the automobile, my childhood image of what a writer did bestowed superhuman powers on the profession. a writer sat privately at her desk and made public things happen. the power was godlike. the sense of accomplishment had to be the same. making words slant across the page was like making rain. flowers grew in ink. hurricanes and revolutions were stirred up by the sound of pen scratching paper. an illiterate underbred book . . . the book of a self-taught working man . . . egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. though she be but little, she is fierce. 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.' 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. by all accounts, sex is a personally encoded communique, continually reinvented. it's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy. destiny is not what is already made; destiny is what we are making. many people think that we are in the hands of destiny, driven in whatever direction life desires or wills, but really, we are the masters of our destiny, especially from the moment we realize this fact. man is responsible for his rise and fall. 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. nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous. i liked how sterile my room was, cleansed of all the emotions that have ever been felt there, all the fights and lovemaking and plain rest of weary travelers wiped clean, leaving no mark on the perfectly made bed. i shall not die of a cold. i shall die of having lived. religion is a daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable. one can go on living when one is intoxicated by life. 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. fame lost its appeal for me when i went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door. you can't help respecting anybody who can spell tuesday, even if he doesn't spell it right. these things seem small and indistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds. fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. 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. ...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... i'm at peace with the world. i'm completely serene. i've discovered my purpose in life. i know why i was put here and why everything exists... i am here so everybody can do what i want. once everybody accepts it, they'll be serene too. there i am in younger days, stargazing / painting picture perfect maps / of how my life and love would be / not counting the unmarked paths / of misdirection / my compass, faith in love's perfection / i missed ten million miles of road / i should have seen we grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves. 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.....

I always give myself such very good advice, but i very seldom follow it. words mean more than what is set down on paper - it takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. it's strange that words are so inadequate. yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. we are wise, wise women. we are giggling girls. the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. can i follow you home and listen to you think? the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. 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. and if tonight my soul may find her peace / in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, / and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower / then i have been dipped again in god, and new-created. it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. when i have a terrible need of - shall i say the word? - religion, then i go out and paint the stars. great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. 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. bush thinks he is still living in the age of cowboys, and that the world is like texas with himself as sheriff. the officials thought it was a cruel joke to leave us stranded in the desert with no way to get home. what they didn't realize was that we were home, soul-centered and strong, women who recognized the sweet smell of sage as fuel for our spirits. i wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. every hour i am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my mouth. years ago i discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down..