Quotes by Authors - Page 5091

When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present, and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.
Peter Matthiessen
The human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye)...
C.S. Lewis
Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you…What would you think? Never mind, it’s not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself?It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods. I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature.You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe?If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being.
Jostein Gaarder
Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.
Dalai Lama XIV
By the age of twenty, you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in- you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy and successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate......I mean, why do people live so long? What could be the difference between death at fifty-five and death at sixty-five or seventy-five or eighty-five? Those extra years... what benefit could they possibly have? Why do we go on living even though nothing new happens, nothing new is learned, and nothing new is transmitted? At fifty-five, your story's pretty much over.
Douglas Coupland
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
Dorothy Thompson
It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare, you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.""And what is that nightmare, Craig?""Life.
Ned Vizzini
We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
C.S. Lewis
I failed to communicate, that's why I chose to leave
Bob Dylan
The heart wants what it wants, Dolp. You don't plan on making your life complicated, it just happens,and you don"t do it on purpose, and you don't do it to hurt people who love you. It just turns out that way sometimes.
Laurell K. Hamilton
So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore.
Gayle Forman
In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.
Gertrude Stein
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
Amelia Earhart
Never compromise your values.
Steve Maraboli
Be happy with who you are and what you do, and you can do anything you want.
Steve Maraboli
I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.
Louisa May Alcott
All these bad experiences that we go through, they don't just disappear. We carry them our whole life trying to forget, escaping in habits, addictions, hate, toxic relationships. But what we don't know is that by doing so we let them stay alive. We water them like withered flowers and we hang onto them to justify our mistakes and failures.
Asper Blurry
The power to change your life lies in the simplest of steps.
Steve Maraboli
The best things aren't perfectly constructed. They aren't illusions. they aren't larger than life. They are life.
Nina LaCour
Be patient. Your skin took a while to deteriorate. Give it some time to reflect a calmer inner state. As one of my friends states on his Facebook profile: "The true Losers in Life, are not those who Try and Fail, but those who Fail to Try.
Jess C. Scott
...because love is continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.
Milan Kundera
Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever.
Shaun David Hutchinson
Allow yourself to enjoy each happy moment in your life.
Steve Maraboli
And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing.
Ally Condie
What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
Eckhart Tolle
You gotta take chances in this life or you're alreadydead.
Megan McCafferty
If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.
Dave Eggers
There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It’s funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don’t want a baby? Don’t have one. I don’t want to get married? I won’t. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it.
Shonda Rhimes
Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent Return on Energy!
Brian Tracy
I'm dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.
Jim Butcher
Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.
Sarah Kay
You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought--put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.
Deb Caletti
It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes-Miles "Pudge
John Green
Sometimes life doesn't happen in chronological order.
Colleen Hoover
I was wasting my time, praying for love.For a love that never comes, from someone who does not exist.
Morrissey
We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.
Philip Pullman
Instead of complaining about the problem and blaming others, start finding the solution.
Roy T. Bennett
Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck
Toba Beta
Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.
Ashly Lorenzana
But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak
Franz Kafka
I don't do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.
Lemmy Kilmister
It is easier to tell a person what life is not, rather than to tell them what it is. A child understands weeds that grow from lack of attention, in a garden. However, it is hard to explain the wild flowers that one gardener calls weeds, and another considers beautiful ground cover.
Shannon L. Alder
The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.
Jodi Picoult
You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.
Bruce Sterling
Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I'll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that's what I call pure, honest fun.
Criss Jami
That means life itself is a fairy tale. Like the characters, we all live and love and search for a happily-ever-after.
Gena Showalter
Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.
John Henry Jowett
In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.
Gabrielle Zevin
life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre, abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is, is a blur. And you could continue living your life thinking that all it is, is just a blur. But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. The painting could be of the sea, the sky, people,buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.
Cecelia Ahern
If everyone started off the day singing, just think how happy they'd be.
Lauren Myracle
When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.
Jordan Belfort
Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.
Meg Rosoff
My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you will never know.
Sarah Dessen
My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.
Amy Sedaris
The backcountry signs say stuff like BEYOND THIS POINT IS A HIGH RISK AREA, WHICH HAS MANY HAZARDS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, AVALANCHES, CLIFFS, AND HIDDEN OBSTACLES, YOU MAY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COST OF YOUR RESCUE and I think, um, no thanks. I choose life.
Cynthia Hand
In a person's lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.
Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
People were messy. They were defined not only by what they'd done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo. Of course, there was no going back - time only moved forward - but people could change. For worse.And for better.It wasn't easy. The world was complicated. Life was hard. And so often, living hurt. So make it worth the pain.
Victoria Schwab
My reasons to liveWere my reasons to dieBut at least they were mineNow I've freedom unboundCut the laces of life
Emilie Autumn
Life stand still here.
Virginia Woolf
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
Henry David Thoreau