Uncategorized Quotes - Page 173

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

Happiness is there where wants and needs are small, but the desire to give is big.

But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.

A writer is like a stick of rock - the words go right through.

I'm not sure if my dream is a dream, or a nightmare.

For one must label a thought with language for one can understand the meaning of the thinking mind.

Attachment is the act of trying to control, manipulate, or sculpt the outside world in such a way that we lose sight of our true nature. Nonjudgmental observation allows a yogi to experience the external world as a mirror reflecting back one’s true nature.

Living in a world: where to be born, is a mere by mention. To be living, a story. Then to die, our eternal; restart!

The biggest gap in your life is that between what you know and what you do." - Bob Proctor

When scientific conversations cease, then dogma rather than knowledge begins to rule the day.

... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative.

The years teach us much, which the days never knew.

The world-wide discrimination against the autodidact has vitiated many people's confidence in determining their own goals and needs. But the same discrimination has also resulted in a multiplicity of growing minorities who are infuriated by this insidious dispossession.

There is no telling how many miles you will have to run while chasing a dream. -- Author unknown

Masturbating is no more sinful than praying or meditating.

Are writers the torchbearers of humanity? It’s a romantic idea, but it’s complete rubbish. We writers are the crocodiles in the river.

Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.

...Material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.

I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity.

The giver is the blessed! The receiver stands still.

Your motivation has to be rock solid. You have to want it so bad that even th threat of death won't take it from you.

Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit. After that you should utilize all necessary material means to achieve your goal.

Pray when you feel like praying," somebody has said. "Pray when you don't feel like praying. Pray until you do feel like praying.

At certain moments, words are nothing; it is thetone in which they are uttered.

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.

...[A] lot of them, without even understanding the cause, just give up. They take what they can-mostly in pleasure,and they make the grand gesture, the wild gesture, because what have they got to lose if they do die in a car wreck or a knife fight or something else equally stupid.

Thoughts have unique beauties you will never able to express it in words.

Only this actual moment is life.

There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little light, and walk the same streets day after day. We spend our afternoons gazing lazily out of windows. Somnambulists, all of us. Someone else said it better: we wake to sleep and sleep to wake.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives… The photograph… is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence… which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity… which, because it cannot be “remembered”, must be narrated.

Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land.

The light was different here in California.

There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.

Before he turned again the to the car his eye was caught by a small clump of unknown flowers. The pale pinkish white heads rose from a mossy pad on top of the wall and trembled delicately in the light breeze. Dalgliesh walked over and stood stock still, regarding in silence their unpretentious beauty. He smelt for the first time the clean half-illusory salt tang of the sea. The air moved warm and gentle against his skin. He was suddenly suffused with happiness and, as always in these rare transitory moments, intrigued by the pure physical nature of his joy. It moved along his veins, a gentle effervescence. Even to analyse its nature was to lose hold of it. But he recognized it for what it was, the first clear intimation since his illness that life could be good.

Life is a panic, without a prayer.

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself.

I don’t want to be the anchor around his feet. I want to be the sky. I want to be the colorful weird name.

It's all about proximity.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough

And yet, I was scared of falling asleep, because the moment I fell asleep my wounds would heal and right then I didn’t want that to happen. Right then, I found a strange but real comfort in the pain.

Rather than recount his life as he has lived it, he must live his life as he will recount it.

I am worthy of touch without bartering my self worth.

I'm not telling you to be quiet. I'm just saying that if you speak a little softer, we both might just hear what peace sounds like.

God will make straight our paths.

I didn't let her go. She went. It's not my fault.She did it.She could undo it. This is feeling so fucking famliar.Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Of is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?

Think of it." Now he is speaking to you, no one but you. "It may not matter what we want for science, or what we think is ethical. All we must do is provide the right environment, and let the heart do what it desires. The heart wants to beat.

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.

They inched through dense, heart-stopping darkness. In the distance was what looked like a bright white door cut out of a black wall. Sunni tiptoed towards it, puzzled by its brilliance.

You’re not alone. You’re never alone. Use creativity to change what world you’re in at this moment.

The fat man looked amused. "What on earth for?" he said. "I never have any contact with writers. If I do, they just keep pestering me about getting paid.

Complexity mumbles. Simplicity speaks

With the change of the seasons, God reminds us that darkness always ends. Light always exists and will always return when missing. There is no night that doesn’t end. No nightmare from which you cannot awaken. No hurt that cannot heal.

The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer—which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them—but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises.

On a trip to Russia I bought one of those Matryoshka “nested dolls” that break apart at the waist to reveal smaller and smaller dolls inside…it occurred to me to me later that each of us, like the nested dolls, contains multiple selves, making us a mysterious combination of good and evil, wisdom and folly, reason and instinct… (pp.80)

A Reader lives life (personal) within Life (social).

What does it matter?" I shrugged. "It's interesting and anything thats interesting is worth learning.

... whatever family name has been given to a case of depression, it has an objective in common with all its kind: to sabotage the network of emotions you had come to identify as the composition of yourself. It is then you discover that your “old self” is not the substantial and inviolable thing you thought it was, nor was the rest of your “old” reality.

I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.