- "Uva uvam vivendo varia fit"
- Larry McMurtry
- "Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet"
- L.M. Montgomery
- "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."
- Lao-tzu as translated by Stephen Mitchell
- "The unnamable is the eternally real."
- Lao-tzu as translated by Stephen Mitchell
- “On the eastern horizon there's a greyish haze, lit now with a rosy, deadly glow. Strange how that colour still seems tender.”
- Margaret Atwood
- "If you were a bird, and lived on high -You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by, -You'd say to the wind when it took you away: "That's where I wanted to go today!"
- A.A. Milne
- "I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful."
- Dostoevsky
- "There was a particularly relaxed sloth, for instance- an exquisite creature, I can vouch for it personally- which had scarcely got down to the foot of its tree before it was wiped out in the great wash of God's vengeance. What do you call that- natural selection? I'd call it professional incompetence."
- Julian Barnes
- "But you are, as yet, at an early stage of your development. we, for instance, are always ourselves: that is what it means to be evolved. We are what we are, and we know what that is. You don't expect a cat suddenly to start barking, do you, or a pig to start lowing? But this is what, in a manner of speaking, those of us who made the Voyage on the Ark learned to expect from your species. One moment you bark, one moment you mew; one moment you wish to be wild, one moment you wish to be tame. We knew where we were with Noah only in this one respect: that we never knew where we were with him."
- Julian Barnes
- "He fell lightly in love several times each year, a tendency in himself which he would occasionally deplore but regularly indulge."
- Julian Barnes
- "A restless fear has dwelt in my mind, such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel. My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that the en and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls; and that they would presently begin to revert...I know this is an illusion, that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women, men and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct, and the slaves of no fantastic Law- beings all together different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance, and long to be away from them and alone...Particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it seemed that I, too, was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain, that sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken with the gid."
- H.G. Wells
- "I am one, and they are all."
- Dostoevsky
- "Then suddenly, for no reason at all, there comes a spell of skepticism and indifference... One moment I don't even want to speak with anyone, and the next I go so far that I'm not only chatting away, but am even deciding to become close with them."
- Dostoevsky
- "I could get used to anything- that is, not really get used, but somehow voluntarily consent to endure it."
- Dostoevsky
- "Either hero or mud, there was no in between. And that is what ruined me, because in the mud I comforted myself with being a hero at other times."
- Dostoevsky
- "But how much love... I used to experience in those dreams of mine, in those 'escapes into everything beautiful and lofty': though it was a fantastical love, though it waas never applied to anything human, there was so much of it, this love, that afterwards in reality, I never even felt any need to apply it; that would have been an unnecessary luxury."
- Dostoevsky
- "...barely alive from the pain in my soul."
- Dostoevsky
- "Soon we'll contrive to be born somehow from an idea."
- Dostoevsky
- Keep Calm and Carry On.
- Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
- Abraham J. Heschel: "Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
jan 23 2012 ∞
jan 30 2014 +
jan 30 2014 +