"Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethidine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here."
Nick Cave
Friday, January 8, 2010
Lessons for life ...
"Never lie, steal, cheat,or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of a loved one. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away."
Unknown
Unknown
Sarah A. Hoyt
"Then . . . I fell in love with you as you are. Fractured, maybe. Lost, perhaps. But I'm no prize either."
Sarah A. Hoyt
Sarah A. Hoyt
Tana French
"I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack "
Tana French
Tana French
Alix Lew
"Dream, believe, achieve, shine, live, laugh, love,
seek, imagine, run, jump, breathe, see, forgive,
repeat ... "
Alix Lew
seek, imagine, run, jump, breathe, see, forgive,
repeat ... "
Alix Lew
Pablo Neruda
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Neil Gaiman
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Erma Bombeck
"Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart."
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food"
"When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."
"Housework can kill you if done right."
"If I had to live my life over:
I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the "good" living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather rambling about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculped like a rose before it melted
in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television, and more
while watching life.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment, realising that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."
There would have been more "I love you's" and more "I'm sorry's"
. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute . . . look at it and really see it . . . and never give it back."
"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. "
"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."
"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
"Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what."
"When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. "
"Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven."
"Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere"
"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick."
"The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one."
"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead."
"Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?"
"Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?""
"Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity."
"Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises."
"My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."
"If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it."
"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."
"All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. "
"In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."
"There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it."
"I come from a home where gravy is a beverage."
"A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween."
"When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out."
"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."
"As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her."
"Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago."
"When God Created Mothers"
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."
The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded.
"One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."
"God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...."
"I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
"But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."
"Can it think?"
"Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.
"There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear."
"What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."
"You are a genius, " said the angel.
Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there."
"Never have more children than you have car windows."
"He who laughs..... lasts."
"Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born."
"Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you. "
Erma Bombeck
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food"
"When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."
"Housework can kill you if done right."
"If I had to live my life over:
I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the "good" living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather rambling about his youth.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have burned the pink candle sculped like a rose before it melted
in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television, and more
while watching life.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment, realising that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."
There would have been more "I love you's" and more "I'm sorry's"
. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute . . . look at it and really see it . . . and never give it back."
"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. "
"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."
"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
"Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what."
"When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. "
"Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven."
"Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere"
"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick."
"The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one."
"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead."
"Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?"
"Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?""
"Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity."
"Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises."
"My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."
"If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it."
"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."
"All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. "
"In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."
"There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it."
"I come from a home where gravy is a beverage."
"A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween."
"When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out."
"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."
"As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her."
"Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago."
"When God Created Mothers"
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."
The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded.
"One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."
"God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...."
"I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
"But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."
"Can it think?"
"Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.
"There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear."
"What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."
"You are a genius, " said the angel.
Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there."
"Never have more children than you have car windows."
"He who laughs..... lasts."
"Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born."
"Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you. "
Erma Bombeck
Gregory Colbert
"The whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song."
Gregory Colbert
Gregory Colbert
Richard Bandler
"The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can't, but in the things you've never considered doing."
Richard Bandler
Richard Bandler
Henrry David Thoreau
"If a man advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
"If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Vincent Van Gogh
"It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done."
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Maya Angelou
"Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently."
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Adversity
"The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all."
Walt Disney Company (Mulan)
Walt Disney Company (Mulan)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Victor Hugo
"What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul"
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. "
"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."
"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
"To love another person is to see the face of God."
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."
"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket."
"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
"Imagination is intelligence with an erection"
"The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal."
"People do not lack strength, they lack will."
"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life."
"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."
"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
"You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it."
"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."
"What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."
"Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory."
"When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar."
"He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
One kiss, and that was all. Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes. They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp ground, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it. She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there.
From time to time Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s. A touch that thrilled. At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
Gradually, they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They had confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already, nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hearts poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him: "What is your name?"
"My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?"
"My name is Cosette.""
"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."
"Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. "
"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this."
"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."
"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness."
"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."
"Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul."
"If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!"
"Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it. (pg. 231)"
"He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."
"To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul."
"Mothers arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein."
"There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher."
"Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them."
"The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so"
"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."
"Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226)"
"What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind."
"Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering."
"Let us say in passing, to be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a woman, a girl, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her, and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection by the degree of the presence that she gives you, and to say to yourself: She dedicates all her time to me, because I possess her whole love; to see the thought if not the face; to be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total eclipse of the world; to imagine the rustling of her dress as the rustling of wings; to hear her moving to and fro, going out, coming in, talking, singing, to think that you are the cause of those steps, those words, that song; to show your personal attraction at every moment; to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases; to become in darkness, and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates; few joys can equal that. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; the conviction the blind have. In their calamity, to be served is to be caressed. Are they deprived of anything? No. Light is not lost where love enters. And what a love! A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty."
"What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!"
Victor Hugo
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. "
"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."
"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
"To love another person is to see the face of God."
"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."
"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket."
"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
"Imagination is intelligence with an erection"
"The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal."
"People do not lack strength, they lack will."
"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life."
"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."
"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
"You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it."
"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."
"What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."
"Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory."
"When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar."
"He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
One kiss, and that was all. Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes. They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp ground, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it. She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there.
From time to time Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s. A touch that thrilled. At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.
Gradually, they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They had confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already, nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hearts poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him: "What is your name?"
"My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?"
"My name is Cosette.""
"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."
"Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. "
"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this."
"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."
"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness."
"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."
"Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul."
"If I speak, I am condemned.
If I stay silent, I am damned!"
"Diamonds are found only in the dark bowels of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that after descending into those depths after long groping in the blackest of this darkness, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he held it in his hand; and it blinded him to look at it. (pg. 231)"
"He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."
"To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul."
"Mothers arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein."
"There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher."
"Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them."
"The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so"
"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."
"Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226)"
"What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind."
"Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering."
"Let us say in passing, to be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a woman, a girl, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her, and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection by the degree of the presence that she gives you, and to say to yourself: She dedicates all her time to me, because I possess her whole love; to see the thought if not the face; to be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total eclipse of the world; to imagine the rustling of her dress as the rustling of wings; to hear her moving to and fro, going out, coming in, talking, singing, to think that you are the cause of those steps, those words, that song; to show your personal attraction at every moment; to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases; to become in darkness, and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates; few joys can equal that. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; the conviction the blind have. In their calamity, to be served is to be caressed. Are they deprived of anything? No. Light is not lost where love enters. And what a love! A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty."
"What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!"
Victor Hugo
Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Movie quote - Pirates of the Carribean
"Elizabeth Swann:
'There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.'
Jack Sparrow:
'I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.'"
Pirates of the Carribean
'There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.'
Jack Sparrow:
'I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.'"
Pirates of the Carribean
Brandon Sanderson
"You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm.
It's really funny."
Brandon Sanderson
It's really funny."
Brandon Sanderson
Nick Hornby
"Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on earth tolerable. "
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby
Philip Pullman
"You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us."
Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman
Monday, January 4, 2010
Forgiveness
"Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor."
C R Strahan
"You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first (or last) kiss."
Jostein Gaarder
"Not forgiving is like drinking cat poison and then waiting for the rat to die."
Anne Lamott
C R Strahan
"You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first (or last) kiss."
Jostein Gaarder
"Not forgiving is like drinking cat poison and then waiting for the rat to die."
Anne Lamott
William P. Young
"Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat...... Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established......... Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation....
Forgiveness does not excuse anything.........You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely."
William P. Young
Forgiveness does not excuse anything.........You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely."
William P. Young
Robert Jordan
"Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget."
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan
Khaled Hosseini
"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."
Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini
Gustave Flaubert
She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage."
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Azar Nafisi
"You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil..."
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi
Scott Dikkers
"Statistically speaking, there is a 65 percent chance that the love of your life is having an affair. Be very suspicious."
Scott Dikkers
Scott Dikkers
George Carlin
"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment."
George Carlin
George Carlin
C.S. Lewis
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis
Benjamin Disraeli
"There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Dreams
"You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. "
JM Barrie
"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
Anaïs Nin
"What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?"
Libba Bray
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
Carl Gustav Jung
"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."
J.M. Barrie
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
Henry David Thoreau
"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth."
George R.R. Martin
"I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream."
Vincent Van Gogh
"Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope".
Kālidāsa
JM Barrie
"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
Anaïs Nin
"What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?"
Libba Bray
"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
Carl Gustav Jung
"Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."
J.M. Barrie
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
Henry David Thoreau
"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth."
George R.R. Martin
"I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream."
Vincent Van Gogh
"Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope".
Kālidāsa
Eleanor Roosevelt
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Neil Gaiman
"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Barbara Kingsolver
"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver
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