Quotes by Writers - Page 131

What is my definition of jazz? 'Safe sex of the highest order.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you...every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.
Marquis de Sade
Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.
Marquis de Sade
Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Matt Groening
Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
George Burns
We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.
Marquis de Sade
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
Lily Tomlin
You can't talk about fucking in America, people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool.
Richard Pryor
Start thinking positively. You will notice a difference. Instead of "I think I'm a loser," try "I definitely am a loser." Stop being wishy-washy about things! How much more of a loser can you be if you don't even know you are one? Either you are a loser or you are not. Which is it, stupid?
Ellen DeGeneres
...once you have resolved to embrace the ideology of positive thinking, you will find a way to interpret virtually any eventuality as a justification for thinking positively. You need never spend time considering how your actions might go wrong.
Oliver Burkeman
Part of the problem with positive thinking, and many related approaches to happiness, is exactly this desire to reduce big questions to one-size-fits-all self-help tricks or ten point plans.
Oliver Burkeman
Levi smiled at her. "Your heart is aching now, I can see that. I know what it feels like. The only thing I can say to try and make it better is to use that pain. Take every feeling you have right now, pour it into your soul and then pour your soul into the song. Doesn't take the pain away, but it gives it purpose. Make sense?
Lexxie Couper
Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.
Joseph Campbell
Who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.
Oliver Burkeman
Through positive thinking and related approaches, we seek the safety and solid ground of certainty, of knowing how the future will turn out, of a time in the future when we'll be ceaselessly happy and never have to fear negative emotions again. But in chasing all that, we close down the very faculties that permit the happiness we crave.
Oliver Burkeman
I'm going to tell you a secret:You don't have to believe every thought that pops into your head.
B. Dave Walters
And here lies the essential between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.
Oliver Burkeman
And here lies the essential difference between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.
Oliver Burkeman
If we can accept the fact that we create illness, it follows naturally that we can also create wellness. And therein lies a most empowering nugget of truth and healing.
Liberty Forrest
Real life is the days we are going to live, not the days we lived.
Ahmed Mahrous.
Sometimes we don’t have a choice in where we come from, but we can definitely choose where we go from there.
Faraaz Kazi
But when nothing in your life happens in a positive frame, it is difficult to think positively and hope for the best.
Faraaz Kazi
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.
Alphonse Karr
Was this the big one or was this the small tremor, the warning? Does it get better - does the sensation of being in a dream underwater go away?
A.M. Homes
I do not believe that a dream should necessarily be taken for reality, or reality for madness.
Adolfo Bioy Casares
However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.
Aldous Huxley
While he wanted to teach me what he knew, I wanted him to see what it all looked like for me—perhaps love is a process of finding a common vision of reality.
Aleksandar Hemon
Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with something motionless about him as though he was gliding through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout.
H.G.Wells
With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.
Fernando Pessoa
Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.
Aldous Huxley
THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.
Agnostic Zetetic
Should' assumes that when either willingness or ability is lacking, it may be compensated for by an abundance of the other. This is simply not realistic.
Agnostic Zetetic
What you call 'contradiction' I call 'complement'.
Agnostic Zetetic
Nothing seems crazy when you're used to it.
Sarah Silverman
I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened. Then why am I so sad?
Lena Dunham
Men in general are as much affected by what a thing appears to be as by what it is, indeed they are frequently influenced more by appearances than by reality.
Niccolò Machiavelli
He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw- knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent deliriumof his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness.
Aldous Huxley
Angels, fairies, gods, hell-heaven, "mediating" messiahs, demons, spirits etc. - are but your cultural-isms. Free be of these prisons.
Fakeer Ishavardas
All's a Oneness. There's nothing else.
Fakeer Ishavardas
You're not a piece of nothing, but the all of everything.
Fakeer Ishavardas
If you're born a man, be a man. If a woman, be proud of being one. For, you're not the body, mind, this or that. "Ye are gods!" - human.
Fakeer Ishavardas
In all humilitylet it be said -there's no godin End Realitybut Onenessunto all is All -Whole's Unity.
Fakeer Ishavardas
According to the reality, I assume that we are not going to meet again. Yet, I do believe that we have met for a reason
Ahmed Alibage
The only way to survive in this world is by keeping alive our dream, without ever fulfilling it, since the fulfilment never measures up to what we imagine.
Fernando Pessoa
If humans created it then it is the product of a choice that somebody made. And if it was chosen it can be changed.
Oli Anderson
There are two types of 'busy': 1)Constantly distracting yourself from what is true. 2) Constantly working to create something real.
Oli Anderson
If we go in to each situation that life throws at us with an attitude that we canlearn from it then we will never be truly defeated.
Oli Anderson
Life is for those that deserve it. Those kings amongst men who can climb out of barrels and will dare to break through glass walls and to transcend all of this whatever it is, these eyes to the ground, this pretence, acting only as is expected and never as is intended. We have been told what is acceptable in what situation and so we take heed. This is not living. In the real world, in nature, there is no need to pretend. There is no place for it.
Oli Anderson
No validation of our rationality - of our very sanity - can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness?
Rebecca Goldstein
Nobody is going to save you but yourself and the ‘best’ and only way to do so isthrough action.
Oli Anderson
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson
I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar.
Roger Zelazny
If philosophy gets you lost in the labyrinth of symbols that distance us from reality, then it is part of the problem; if it motivates positive action that can create a better world, philosophy is usually a gift.
Oli Anderson
The final lesson is that 'reality' is always the way to go and that acceptance is the only way to get there.
Oli Anderson
I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing.
George Saunders
I decided to give up meaningless sex, but then I remembered that everything is meaningless.
Oli Anderson
There is in certain ancient things a traceOf some dim essence --More than form or weight;A tenuous aether, indeterminate,Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.A faint, veiled sign of continuitiesThat outward eyes can never quite descry;Of locked dimensions harboring years gone by,And out of reach except for hidden keys.
H.P. Lovecraft
Reality is always richer, more unpredictable than our deductions
Leonardo Sciascia
The reality waves itself an assertion as the rose its fragrance; it doesn't require verifiability of it. Indeed, the weak and ignorant minds need that.
Ehsan Sehgal