Famous Quotes Ipsum

Security is mostly a superstition. it does not exist in nature...life is either a daring adventure or nothing. i don't want my hair cut! i don't want my eyebrows up or down. i want them right where they are! i'm leaving now, and if anyone so much as makes a move to stop me, there'll be plenty of hair cut and it won't be mine! 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. can't say fairer than that. in memory, everything seems to happen to music. if we could stay that way forever; if we could stay filled to the brim and floating toward the darkness, never suffocating or dying - . i think the loneliest thing is to be alone with another person. i'd rather be by myself than with someone who has no idea who i am. there is no greater power on earth or in heaven than pure love. be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge. be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you. there is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. it was not a dream, but real. thus the real can be greater than any dream. diversity is as wide as all the tones of voice, ways of walking, coughing, blowing one's nose, sneezing. we first distinguish grapes from among fruits, then muscat grapes, then those from condrieu, then from desargues, then the particular graft. is that all? has a vine ever produced two bunches alike, and has any bunch produced two grapes alike? i have never judged anything in exactly the same way. i cannot judge a work while doing it. i must do as painters do and stand back, but not too far. yes, some of god's handiwork is flawed. there are rivers that overflow, volcanoes that aren't quite sealed, and tectonic plates that tend to crack over time. but isn't it comforting to know that even god has trouble finding a reliable contractor. in three words i can sum up everything i've learned about life: it goes on..

I would rather be kicked with a foot than be overcome by a loud voice speaking cruel words. she walks in beauty, like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies; / and all that's best of dark and bright / meet in her aspect and her eyes: / thus mellow'd to that tender light / which heaven to gaudy day denies feel the fear and do it anyway. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. out yonder there is this huge world... which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle. every man's memory is his private literature. i should be doing my homework now. but the way i see it, playing in the snow is a lot more important. out here i'm learning skills that i can apply throughout the rest of my life - procrastinating and rationalizing. darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. i would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating. it doesn't interest me what you do for a living. i want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. it doesn't interest me how old you are. i want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. it doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. i want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from the fear of further pain. i want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. i want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or remember the limitations of being human. it doesn't interest me if the story you are telling is true. i want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. i want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. i want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from its presence. i want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'yes!' it doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. i want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children. it doesn't interest me who you are or how you came to be here. i want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. it doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. i want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. i want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you like the company you keep in the empty moments. it was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes / into mine, saying: these are eyes i have known / from the first... it was simple to touch you / against the hacked background, the grain of what we / had been, the choices, the years... it was even simple / to take each other's lives in our hands, as bodies. eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. the river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. on some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. i am haunted by waters..

The individual is born of nature, but the artist is born of that individual, yearning to transcend the merely "natural" and to make complete that which, existentially, is forever incomplete, unrealized. in the artist's own experience, of course, art is fundamentally indefinable, unsayable; there is something sacred about its demands upon the soul, something inherently mysterious in the forms it takes, no less than its contents. always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or your predecessors. try to be better than yourself. for as long as i can remember, i had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. now i was in my own way; i myself was a dark object i could not ignore. i couldn't remember how to forget myself. i didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as i might, i couldn't avoid it. i was a boulder blocking my own path. i was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. so this was adolescence..... it took me too long to realize / that i don't take good pictures / 'cause i have the kind of beauty / that moves if the path is beautiful, let us not ask where it leads. the writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels. 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.' think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. if a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as michelangelo painted, or beethoven composed music, or shakespeare composed poetry. he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. 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. 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. your mind might make a connection that is useful. but true is another matter. true implies that you have found a connection that exists independent of your apprehension of it, that would exist whether you noticed it or not. and i must say that i have never seen such a connection in my life. there are times when i suspect that there are no such connections, that all links, bonds, ties, and similarities are creatures of thought and have no substance. but you will,' the queen said, 'if you don't make a memorandum of it.'</p> ...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... it occurred to him that, for the first time since his birth, life had said yes to archie jones. not simply an 'ok' or 'you-might-as-well-carry-on-since-you've-started', but a resounding affirmative. education, in the broadest, truest sense, will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless of condition. only a spirit delighting in disembodiment would not appreciate the mushy, wet, sensuous body we are and the muddy, naturally decaying world we inhabit. we all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion. you can be ashamed of me if you like, but you cannot make me feel ashamed of myself. when you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are it's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightening. grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with..