Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The right sort of gossip is a charming and stimulating thing. The Odyssey itself is simply glorious gossip, and the same may be said of nearly every tale of mingled fact and legend which has been handed down to us through the ages.
The bottom line is that you are the one who is creating your life the way it is. The life you currently live is the result of all your past thoughts and actions. You are in charge of your current thoughts and your present feelings.
I don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these things.
So every time you think about your work-life balance issue, remember what your boss is thinking about - and that's winning. Your needs may get heard - and even successfully resolved - but not if the boss's needs aren't met as well.
Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.
Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted. Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.'
The reason that I think it is a waste of time to engage in moral value judgements about people's violence, is because it doesn't advance by one iota our understanding of either the causes or the prevention of the violent behaviour.
My absolute favorite song I've ever written is "This Is Where We Came In." It's a nudge at younger listeners, cause at one time you could go into a cinema halfway through a film and then stay through and pick up where you left off.
I'm a girl of extremes. When I love something, I'm like a puppy dog (without all the licking). When I'm cranky, I'm a wasp (like a whole hive of 'em). And when I'm angry, I'm a Mother Bear with a predator after her cubs: Dangerous.
I realized that I had been living a great part of my life like an ostrich, with my head stuck in the sand. Now I see that I was just prancing around my magical circle while the walls of my prison were being erected by other people.
Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes.
I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.
She kissed me on the mouth. Her mouth tasted like iced coffee and cardamom, and I was overwhelmed by the taste, her hot skin and the smell of unwashed hair. I was confused, but not unwilling. I would have let her do anything to me.
Over-intellectualizing can justify practically anything. Reason has reasons that can create holocausts. In the 20th century, we have certainly seen how much killing and disaster has been championed with superb intellectual reasons.
Perhaps some of the appeal of the dangerous-but-yummy paranormal anti-hero lies in his scorn for societal expectations. Yes, women have come a long way, but there are still some cultural stigmas more associated with women than men.
Cat, hmmm? From where I sit you look more like a Kitten." My head jerked around and I shot him an annoyed look. Oh, I was going to enjoy this, all right. "It's Cat," I repeated firmly. "Cat Raven." "Whatever you say, Kitten Tweedy.
Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn't mean is isn't real, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, doesn't mean it doesn't matter, but basically, we're talking a practice swing in the big game of love.
Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief.
There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.
I remember the first time I went to Europe, I had someone take a picture of me there, so I could really see myself there. There's a sense of being outside yourself, and I think celebrity allows us that too, to be outside ourselves.
It is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.
Literature is such a profound and deep way to look into someone else's life, his mind, his hopes and thoughts. Books have opened so many doors for me, taking me to places where my normal life and its finite limits could never have.
People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.
Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant...it is always painful
It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'
Physical growth is a function of time. No two-year-old child has ever been six feet tall. Intellectual growth is a function of learning. Spiritual growth is neither a function of time or learning, but it is a function of obedience.
We are either the masters or victims of our attitudes. It is a matter of personal choice. Who we are today is the result of choices we made yesterday. Tomorrow, we will become what we choose today. To change means to choose change.
As what you first are moves in the context of form, you have real reflection within that form, real reflection of what you are, what you are being and what you are doing. The movement in form enables you to comprehend what you are.
It was only after 20 years of being dunked in the religious culture that I got caught up in 'religion.' I had no exposure to Christianity as a child. I was not raised in a Christian home. I became spiritually hungry in high school.
My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don't remember how it ended - if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn't end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.
By the time I was writing the second book, my life had changed rather dramatically, thanks to the intervention of television, and I needed to find a way to discuss that. Otherwise the big, fake book would not be true on some level.
There is a difference between broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary economic condition, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of your spirit, and you must vow to never, ever be poor again.
I like the man who takes the stones Upon his rocky road With smiling lips instead of groans, Whate'er his heavy load Who seizes each as on he goes, And neatly crumbles it, And turns his share of pebbly woes To stores of inner grit.
There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God’s counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God's counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.
I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
You go back and you read your Constitution. You read your Declaration of Independence. And you will see that the only people who could decide these freedoms were white males who owned property, and all the rest of us were excluded.
I don’t think we ever really live in the present; instead, we’re either just this side of the past or future, wavering anxiously between anticipation and recollection. That’s where I lived my life, always wanting, longing, wishing.
It's the side-by-side culture of the Talmud I like so much. 'On the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is frustrating for people seeking absolute faith, but for me it gives religion an ambidextrous quality that suits my temperament.
You have to be a mindful eater. There has to be intention in what you do in your life if youre going to be happy and authentic. Food isnt supposed to be entertainment in the way that your kids, your work, and your relationship are.
Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
America is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.
When you focus on how wonderful God is and all the great things He's done... is doing... and even will do in your life, your natural response will be praise, adoration and awe. Don't let yourself ever get used to it... stay amazed!
The definition of who's literate and who's not keeps changing. So, in Neanderthal times, if you painted on a cave wall, that was enough to transmit how you hunt, how you eat, how you cook, how you dress, and we can read about that.
We're beginning to enter an era where it gets really cheap and really fast to begin to do things like make fuels, and make textiles, and make extra teeth for ourselves. And we're beginning to think about how we regrow our bladders.
One of the good things about the public Human Genome Project is that the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health spent a part of their budget on the ethical, legal, and social implications of their research.
It wasn‟t even desire. It was far more than that. It was love. Love. With a capital L and swirly script and hearts and flowers and whatever else the angels— and yes, all those annoying little cupids—wished to use for embellishment.
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.