Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 64

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night.
Leonard Cohen
Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word.
Leonard Cohen
Though I love your company, your instructions are wasted her. I will always choose the woman who caries me off, I will always sit with the family of loneliness.
Leonard Cohen
I is for immortality, which for some poets is a necessary compensation. Presumably miserable in this life, they will be remembered when the rest of us are long forgotten. None of them asks about the quality of that remembrance--what it will be like to crouch in the dim hallways of somebody's mind until the moment of recollection occurs, or to be lifted off suddenly and forever into the pastures of obscurity. Most poets know better than to concern themselves with such things. They know the chances are better than good that their poems will die when they do and never be heard of again, that they'll be replaced by poems sporting a new look in a language more current. They also know that even if individual poems die, though in some cases slowly, poetry will continue: that its subjects, it constant themes, are less liable to change than fashions in language, and that this is where an alternate, less lustrous immortality might be. We all know that a poem can influence other poems, remain alive in them, just as previous poems are alive in it. Could we not say, therefore, that individual poems succeed most by encouraging revisions of themselves and inducing their own erasure? Yes, but is this immortality, or simply a purposeful way of being dead?
Mark Strand
In any given situation you will find only what you bring with you...
Christopher Earle
Perhaps I lost sight of my dreams when I became an adult and resigned myself to acting the way adults were supposed to act.
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
If you're trying to figure out why something's not working,” Old Lou had explained, “just focus on the things that do work. Move through those things first and eventually you'll find the one part that's stuck.
Danika Stone
It may take a lifetime for an individual to live, but it takes just under four seconds for the occupants of the Seville to live a collective life.
Bradley Somer
Some wear greed as a fine suit of clothes. But you, my son, bear its stamp ever more poorly.
Patrick deWitt
People who do not eat butterflies will wear their clothes the wrong way, and people who wear their clothes the wrong way are inviting lemmings inside." -- Muzhduk the Ugli the Third
Alexander Boldizar
From the managerial perspective, Sir Oliver Humperdink, a heinous sort for most of his career, said the release of pentup emotions might even have been healthy for mind and soul. "As heels, we were able to be as annoying and politically incorrect’ as possible.We were able to say and do what everyone probably wanted to say and do, but, for one reason or another, could never, ever get away with. And, by being able to do so, I generally found that my fellow heels were much more 'easygoing' than our babyface counterparts who had to 'toe the line.
Greg Oliver
Man's status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking.
Manly P. Hall
A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
Yann Martel
Her mother had once told her that one could run away from home, from husband, from children, from trouble, but it was impossible to run away from oneself. "You always have to take yourself with you," she said. And now, bending towards her mother, Hope wondered if in death you were finally able to run away from yourself. This might be death's gift. She knew that the thought wasn't terribly profound, but she was moved by the notion of completion and of escape.
David Bergen
There is nothing like discovering your own secrets in someone else’s story. Those thoughts and feelings you believed were too ugly or strange or idealistic or desperate or whimsical or hungry or sad they had to be just you because there could be no other place for them, anywhere. Books that make you realize you’re not alone, you never were. Those are the ones I like best.
Courtney Summers
Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others.
L.M. Montgomery
The keys to liberation are universal and essentially simple: disengage from all the stories you've been telling yourself about life and who you are or should be as you negotiate your way through, and all at once you know yourself as divine, all-powerful, unstoppable and magnificent, as any divine, all-powerful, unstoppable being would.
John C. Parkin
...consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective ...
John Geddes
...you've lost perspective? Well, get it back - God alone has the third person point of view in this life ...
John Geddes
...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...
John Geddes
...I look out at the world through your transparent face...
John Geddes
There were always people who struggled their way to the top of the heap, no matter how much that heap looked like garbage when seen from the outside.
Michelle Sagara West
Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?
Emma Donoghue
...otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.
Margaret Atwood
Nothing is clear now. Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fix on a detail and see it as thought it were magnified -- a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on a man's hands -- or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world. The darkening sky is hugely blue, gashed with rose, blood, flame from the volcano or wound or flower of the lowering sun. The wavering green, the sea of grass, piercingly bright. Black tree trunks, contorted, arching over the river.
Margaret Laurence
On the Rules of PerspectiveA bad trick. Mistake. Dishonesty. These are the views of Braque. Why? Braque rejected perspective. Why? Someone who spends his life drawing profiles will end up believing that man has one eye, Braque felt. Braque wanted to take full possession of objects. He said as much in published interviews. Watching the small shiny planes of the landscape recede out of his grasp filled Braque with loss so he smashed them. Nature morte, said Braque.
Anne Carson
The Law Polarity decrease that everything has an opposite it's the flip side of the coin, you're right my left, consider this next time you disagree with someone because their right from their point of view.
Bob Proctor
The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.
James MacDonald
In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.
Margaret MacMillan
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.
Eckhart Tolle
As of this writing, I am twenty-five years old. I have been alive for 307 months. Nine of those months were pretty terrible. But 298 of those months have been very good. I have been happy. I have been very blessed. Who knows how many more months I have to live? But even if I died tomorrow, nine out of 307 seems like pretty good odds.
Elizabeth Smart
Here there was no monster greater than the ragged mountains.
Rachel Hartman
It was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical options.
David Brooks
If I'd defined success very narrowly, limiting it to peak, high-visibility experiences, I would have felt very unsuccessful and unhappy during those years. Life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so.
Chris Hadfield
And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she'd been reading.
Margaret Atwood
Live with a pure and open heart and mind. Quiet all the rest. Our biggest obstacle was always ourselves. Thoughts that come from a place of love: are never wrong.
Akiroq Brost
To be conscientious. You must first be conscious.
Akiroq Brost
Apathy is the opposite of caring. If you’re apathetic towards something, then it isn’t something you want.
Akiroq Brost
Listen to what flows from your own mouth. Is it really the message you intend to give? Is it coming out the way you want it to? Is it being received the way you hope it will be?
Akiroq Brost
If what you want doesn’t occupy space, time and energy in your life. If it doesn’t involve some frustration, exasperation, anger, sadness, or fear; then I dare say: It’s not real! It’s a fairy tale!
Akiroq Brost
The next time, you say that you want something, watch your behavior. If you try to cop out of doing what it takes, if you hide behind excuses, if you just don’t want to do what it takes then perhaps reconsider: Is what you think you want actually something that you do in fact want?
Akiroq Brost
If you want something, then you also want everything that comes with it. If you don’t want what comes with it; then guess what?! You really didn’t want it in the first place!
Akiroq Brost
Life is a one shot deal, it is entirely up to you what you do with it. Me? I intend to make it the best I can, for as long as I can.
Akiroq Brost
We make time for what's important and what's important should include what we love. One life worth living!
Akiroq Brost
Your traits are not good or bad. What you do or don't do with them is what determines the result. Give your traits a useful role. Recognize and utilize all parts that make up you. Love and empower yourself as you are.
Akiroq Brost
You can believe whatever you will, as long as you realize: it was your decision!
Akiroq Brost
I believe we are the ones who hurt ourselves the most, by how we receive, by how we perceive.
Akiroq Brost
Your thoughts are your truth, so make them good, be good, do good.
Akiroq Brost
Do what you feel is right and good. There will always be haters and naysayers..and their problem..is just that..their problem!
Akiroq Brost
Live your life with a Burning Passion, with an Unquenchable Thirst for knowledge and wisdom.
Akiroq Brost
Then the nurse did turn to glance, and then stare—actually stare—at me. His look made me feel as if I was green, or whistling, or dead.
Rivka Galchen
If you aren't outraged, then you just aren't paying attention
Lisa Borden
Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I’m in better shape than they are.
Margaret Atwood
You can't see the world from somebody else's point of view and not be changed.
Lena Coakley
What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.
Margaret Atwood
The reason why we believe that change is possible is not because we are idealists but because we believe we have made it, so other people can make it as well.
Roméo Dallaire
I think that one of the benefits of optimism and idealism is that they lead you into things you would never have tried if you'd let yourself imagine how hard it was going to turn out to be.
Roméo Dallaire
It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty. I am gonna drink it through this crazy straw.
Joey Comeau
The American political experience can therefore be viewed as optimism in the collective.
Michael J. Fox
But you knew what would happen. Why would you choose to walk right into a situation where you know the person is going to be hurtful? It kills me to see you do that, and you do it all the time. It's like a form of insanity. - Peter MorrowYou call it insanity, I call it optimism. - Clara Morrow
Louise Penny