Quotes about life
page 93

“The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. To make sure that, however it finds you, it finds you under very weird circumstances.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

Death

“His blood coursed through my veins sweeter than life itself. And as it did, Lestats words made sense to me.
I knew peace only when I killed and when I heard his heart in that terrible rhythm,
I knew again what peace could be.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Peace, Sense, Heart

“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

Heart

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

John Milton book Areopagitica

Source: Areopagitica

Books

“A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

“At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

“Life is only precious because it ends, kid.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Grass

“Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Death, Forgetting

“Maybe when all was said and done, the imagination was the most powerful of all weapons. It was the imagination of the human race that had allowed it to dream of a life beyond cold caves and of a possible future in the stars.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: Winter Moon

Dreams, Imagination, Star, Future

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Source: Me: Stories of My Life

Funny

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Error, Feeling, Failure

“And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty, Madness

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Happiness, Wise, Happy

“But a living is not a life.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

“There are many things in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

“Fate is how your life unfolds when you let fear determine your choices. A path of destiny reveals itself to you, however, when you confront your fear and make conscious choices.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Fate, Fear

“You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.”

Philip Roth book Indignation

Source: Indignation

Feeling, Sea

“the biggest tragedy of life is the utter impossibility to change what you have done”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Change

“I existed before I received this body. I am the external and fundamental life energy of the universe.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart

Universe

“Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

People

“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Dead

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Love, Pain, Hate, Youth

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Education, Behavior, Parent, Dependency

“Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

“The only certainty life contains is death.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

Death

“Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

World, Waiting

“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Love, Men

“For now, I just want things all safe and familiar. My life may not be perfect, but it is what I have known.”

Ann M. Martin A Corner of the Universe

Source: A Corner of the Universe

Perfection

“But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

“But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Passion

“Everything has two endings-
a horse, a piece of string, a phone call.

Before a life, air.
And after.

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Come, Thief: Poems

Silence, Horse

“Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Thinking, Learning, Singing, Dance

“But I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Happiness, Sadness, Feeling

“It was as simple as that - they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple.

("For The Rest Of Her Life")”

Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) American author and screenwriter

Source: Angels of Darkness

Beauty, Change

“When life sucks, read. They can't yell at you for that. And if they do, then you can ignore them.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Reading

“You live your life today,
Not tomorrow,
and certainly not yesterday.”

John Grisham (1955) American lawyer, politician, and author

“Salem snorted. "The Vamp basically told her, 'I'm in a weird place in me life right now, and I need some space.' Of course, he told her that by pointing a bloody sword at her whilst bellowing, 'I forsake you!' in front of the whole kingdom.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Shadow's Claim

“America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's "winner take nothing" that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Source: Invisible Man (1952)

Fate, Truth, Country

“Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.”

Jonathan Carroll book The Marriage of Sticks

Source: The Marriage of Sticks

Dogs, Forgiveness, Sleep

“How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Love, Truth

“Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting… By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Death

“Would you rather live your life according to the approval of others or aligned with your truth and your dreams?”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class

Truth, Dreams

“My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals

Childhood

“The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.”

Anatole France book The Revolt of the Angels

Variant: For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
Source: The Revolt of the Angels (1914), Ch. XXI

“Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

Anthony Trollope book The Small House at Allington

Source: The Small House at Allington (1864), Ch. 32

People, Thinking

“But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Time

“Oh, Life, I am yours. Whatever it is you want of me, I am ready to give.”

William Steig (1907–2003) American cartoonist, children's illustrator and writer

Source: Dominic

“… because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Happiness

“I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Fear

“Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don’t even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I’m being upstaged by a dead pig.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Dead

“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Literature

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Source: Adonais

Death

“I've always taken 'The Wizard of Oz' very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.”

Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States

Idea

“The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Books

“Why did the Lord Master take one look at you and leave? What are you, Barrons?”

“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms. Lane, than anyone in your life has ever been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“I envied it; not the idea of having so much money that you could throw it away, but the thought of growing up in a world where someone cared so much about your happiness and so little about what you accomplished in life.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Money, Happiness, World, Idea

“My life's not tragic at all. How many guys do you know who are bankrupt and just bought a $3 million house and are getting ready to get $6 million more?”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm
On himself

Guy, Housing

“One more instance I will give of his interest and his knowledge. We were passing under a fir tree when we heard a small song in the tree above us. We stopped and I said that was the song of a golden-crested wren. He listened very attentively while the bird repeated its little song, as its habit is. Then he said, "I think that is exactly the same song as that of a bird that we have in America"; and that was the only English song that he recognized as being the same as any bird song in America. Some time afterwards I met a bird expert in the Natural History Museum in London and told him this incident, and he confirmed what Colonel Roosevelt had said, that the song of this bird would be about the only song that the two countries had in common. I think that a very remarkable instance of minute and accurate knowledge on the part of Colonel Roosevelt. It was the business of the bird expert in London to know about birds. Colonel Roosevelt's knowledge was a mere incident acquired, not as part of the work of his life, but entirely outside it.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

History, Business, Nature, Knowledge

“I used to say that I spent half my life breaking bones on the rugby field, then the other half putting them back together in the operating theatre.”

JPR Williams (1949) Welsh rugby union player

JPR Given The Breaks - My Life In Rugby (2007), published by Hodder ISBN 9780340923085

“I think my reputation is something that I'll probably try to spend the rest of my life living it down and it probably won't work.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

60 Minutes interview (2006)

Thinking

“In those three years, (from fourteen to seventeen years old)… I came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animais. I remember that a companion of those days,' of whom I hâve since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. That lesson has influenced my whole life. As for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop I earned a scanty wage, I long deplored being constrained to do so, but I hâve since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 2-3

Secret, School, Beauty, Art

“Though life seems painful, at the same time it is wonderful”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

空色(Sorairo), Siki
Lyrics

Pain, Time

“For death and life, in ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world’s shore,
And all our calm is in that balm—
Not lost but gone before.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

Not lost but gone before (c. 1863).

Death, World

“Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club (1989)

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

People, Age, Art, Music

“The common people (live in) poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe… their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking…”

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Pelsaert, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Jahangir’s India

People, Home, Water, Housing

“There are girls who do not like real life… Some of these girls are innocent enough to think that these unreal friendships [with homosexuals] will lead to true love — a kind of sexual intercourse that will happen to them without their having to take too horribly much notice. Even those who are sufficiently sophisticated to know that this will not be so persist in these relationships. They provide an opportunity to lavish emotion on a pseudo-man without paying the price that in heterosexual circumstances would be inevitable.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 19

Love, Friendship, Girl, Thinking

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Death, God, Health

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace - this magic, organic agora - starts to splutter, and people suffer.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Beck Breaks from the Pack,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=546 WorldNetDaily.com, April 23, 2010. <br class="br">2010s, 2010

People, Suffering, Time

“We do, to what extent of freedom we have earned or are allowed by others and ourselves, what we most want to do. We say - speak, paint, carve, write, express ourselves… as we damn please. And in both the doing of things and the talking about them - which together seem to me to sum up life - we so crave freedom or liberty or whatever one may choose to call it as to justify our Declaration's romantically terming it an unalienable right of Man, bestowed on Man by his Creator.”

Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) American artist

This Is My Own, p. 130 (1940)

Freedom, Painting

“Wait,” Foyle commanded. He looked at the beaming grin engraved in the steel robot face. “But society can be so stupid. So confused. You’ve witnessed this conference.”
“Yes, sir, but you must teach, not dictate. You must teach society.”
“To space-jaunte? Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?”
“Because you’re alive, sir. You might as well ask: Why is life? Don’t ask about it. Live it.”
“Quite mad,” Dagenham muttered.
“But fascinating,” Y’ang-Yeovil murmured.
“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.
“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
“Why can’t we all move forward together?”
“Because you’re all different. You’re not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow.”
“Who leads?”
“The men who must … driven men, compelled men.”
“Freak men.”
“You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”
“Thank you very much.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

“My pleasure, sir.”
Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 16 (p. 251).

Men, Pleasure, Stupidity, World

“But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt
Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
Documents on International Affairs, 1963, Royal Institute of International Affairs, ed. Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, p. 36.

World, Law, Art, Soul

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

People, Way, Travel, Light

“Life without absorbing occupation is hell — joy consists in forgetting life.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

Hell, Joy, Forgetting

“Life into death—life’s other shape, no rupture, only crossing.”

Dejan Stojanovic book Circling: 1978-1987

“Awakening of a Flower,” p. 38
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Conversations with Atoms”

Death

“Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Paedagogus 2 (circa 210).

Women, Law, Art, Feeling

“The facts, indeed, connected with this gloomy department of statistics show that the most valuable period of human life—that in which a man is producing more than he is consuming—is that which provides the greatest number of victims.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 18

“These are smart people;
They receive a mess from the east, and a good life from the west;
They never rush because only life rushes;
They are not interested in what awaits after tomorrow;
What is meant to be will come, and little of it depends on them;
When they are together they are in trouble, for this they do not like to be together often;
They rarely trust anyone, but it’s easiest to fool them with nice words;
They do not resemble heroes, but they are not easily scared with threats;
They pay attention to nothing, they care not of what happens around them;
And then out of nowhere suddenly everything interests them, they flip everything and look around;
Then they become sleepers again and do not like to remember what came to pass;
They are scared of change because it often brings evil;
They are easily fed up with a man, even if he does them good;Strange people;
They talk bad about you but love you, kiss you on the cheek but hate you;
Laugh at noble deeds but remember them;
They spend most of their life on spite and goodness;
And don’t know which is stronger when;
Evil, good, gentle, raw, unable to move on, stormy, open, hidden;
They are all this and everything in between;
And most importantly they are mine, and I am theirs;
And everything I’m saying; I’m saying about myself.”

Meša Selimović (1910–1982) Yugoslav-Bosnian writer

Poem

Love, Hate, People, Fools

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 8, pp. 224

Spring, Bird, Sleep, Singing

“We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century - the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

Letter to the central committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) https://varjag2007su.livejournal.com/2591915.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social (20 October 1970).

War, People, Books, World

“Life from nonlife, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 28

God, Water, Wine

“That man was so much larger than life that there's no scale by which to measure him. Most of Wilson's dialogue, if put down on paper, seems either vulgar or obscene.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

Gene Fowler, as quoted by Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, Viking Press, New York, 1974, ISBN 0-670-41374-7.
About

“As a means of expression, painting must deliver universally valid statements, make allegorical reflections on life, and create new mythologies.”

Stefan Szczesny (1951) German painter and sculptor

Mustique (2002)

Universe, Painting

“Spiritual unfoldment cannot take place merely because of an intellectual appreciation of the theory of perfection. Evolution takes place only when a corresponding change in the subjective life is accomplished.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Change, Perfection

“I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at the end that I would love to live.
Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers the law.
The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "radical" by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and significant figures in the history of this branch of the law.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Love, Books, World, Law

“Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

"The Limits of Mother Love", in The New York Times Book Review, March 31, 1985

Family

“The self-delusion that mysterious forces and persons unknown are conspiring against us is, surprisingly, a comforting belief, because it means we’re significant enough in this anarchic world to warrant someone’s enmity. That delusion saves us from the far more difficult to accept reality: that we’re not that important to anyone. That the universe just isn’t “into” us.
Paranoia is the emotive-psychestructure’s response to feeling ignored, unloved, or forgotten in an existence filled with random acts of destructive indifference emphasizing the inherent futility of life and struggle. If you’re ever to achieve serenity, ultimately you must accept that in such a vast cosmos, you simply don’t matter very much.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)

World, Feeling, Reality, Universe

“The century of revolution in the United States after the Civil War was economic, not political, freeing households from an unremitting daily grind of painful manual labor, household drudgery, darkness, isolation, and early death. Only one hundred years later, daily life had changed beyond recognition. Manual outdoor jobs were replaced by work in air-conditioned environments, housework was increasingly performed by electric appliances, darkness was replaced by light, and isolation was replaced not just by travel, but also by color television images bringing the world into the living room. Most important, a newborn infant could expect to live not to age forty-five, but to age seventy-two. The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique in human history, unrepeatable because so many of its achievements could happen only once.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 1 ; Lead paragraph

Death, Pain, War, Age

“When you open a door for others to have an opinion on your relationship, it can be dangerous. Find what you need, not what everyone else wants for you. Women have been taught that in order to have a place in the world, an identity, they must marry and have children. If that's the life you truly want, great. But for many women, marriage is only about needing the world to know that someone desires them enough to say, "Here's a contract to prove that I love you and will commit to you for the rest of my life."”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

For these women, no contract equals no validation — and, thus, no reason for existing.
O interview (2003)

Love, Women, Marriage, Children

“The love of simplicity, precision and clarity, is totally Western. Today's rational plastic form does not come from the Mediterranean or the Orient; it comes from the North [of France]. The North, younger, quicker less subtle, has seen straight to the heart of the new problem of construction that is posed by modern life.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from: 'Actualités, Fernand Léger', in 'Varietés nr. 1', 1928, pp. 523-524
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Love, Problem, Heart

“Darab Khan who had been sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and to demolish the great temple of the place, attacked the place on the 8th March/5th Safar, and slew the three hundred and odd men who made a bold defence, not one of them escaping alive. [16 October 1678] The temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood were demolished…'On Sunday, the 25th May/24th Rabi. S., Khan Jahan Bahadur came from Jodhpur, after demolishing the temples and bringing with himself some cart-loads of idols, and had audience of the Emperor, who highly praised him and ordered that the idols, which were mostly jewelled, gold en, silver y, bronze, copper or stone, should be cast in the yard (jilaukhanah) of the Court and under the steps of the Jam'a mosque, to be trodden on. They remained so for some time and at last their very names were lost' [25 May 1679]…Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana's palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers Twenty machator Rajputs who were sitting in the temple vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images…..”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: “Darab Khan was sent with a strong force to punish the Rajputs of Khandela and demolish the great temple of that place.” (M.A. 171.) “He attacked the place on 8th March 1679, and pulled down the temples of Khandela and Sanula and all other temples in the neighbourhood.”(M.A. 173.) Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Men, Age, Strong, Time

“Strength, power, and majesty, belong to man;
They make the glory native to his life;
But sweetness is a woman's attribute —
By that she has reigned, and by that will reign.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Empire of Woman' — Schiller.
Translations, From the German

“It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), p. 173 http://books.google.com/books?id=Af84fBmzmVYC&q=%22It+was+long+ago+in+my+life+as+a+simple+reporter+that+I+decided+that+facts+must+never+get+in+the+way+of+truth%22&pg=PA173#v=onepage <br class="br">Attributed

Truth, Way