Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Often when people tell their story, they talk about their strengths and resiliency. It's really about their determination and their aspiration to survive and live.
Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius, and he who carries that quality to absurdity has reached it; which is always a source of amusement to sensible people.
My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real estate, And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.
The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.
When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.
A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want.
If you've given away a sense of your own destiny, you need enormous amounts of hierarchy and protection within the structure to make up for what you've given away.
Men look to the East for the dawning things, for the light of a raising sun But they look to the West, to the crimson West, for the things that are done, are done.
This bread I break was once the oat, This wine upon a foreign tree Plunged in its fruit; Man in the day or wind at night Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.
i remember we all cried like the Missouri when my Uncle Sol's coffin lurched because somebody pressed a button (and down went my uncle Sol and started a worm farm)
Almighty Father! let thy lowly child, Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold,-- A patriot bard, by sycophants reviled. Let him live usefully, and not die old!
The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image— And this is the silence of wisdom.
I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.
When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost To haunt the scene where I was happiest To bend above the thing I loved the most
Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!
The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'
Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat.
It's kind of a crazy thing to decide that you're going to be worth tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and set out to do that. It doesn't suit everybody.
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her.
We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in tne arms of the All-Powerful.
Love will not be constrain'd by mastery. When mast'ry comes, the god of love anon Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone. Love is a thing as any spirit free.
If no love is, O God, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo? If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me
My own heart let me more have pity on; let Me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable; not live this tormented mind With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
Although the season is joyful everywhere, / And mountain and valley are all verdant, / That would seem a truly small matter to him / Who has met mischance in love.
God will forgive me. It's his job." Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it.
Most men call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness of a hoe.
I am the Angel of the Sun Whose flaming wheels began to run When God's almighty breath Said to the darkness and the Night, Let there be light! and there was light.
Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.
At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.
The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.
O beautiful white land, olives and wild anemone and violet mingled among the shale, and purple wings of little winter-butterflies say, here Psyche, the soul, lies.
Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but, all unwept and unknown, are lost in the distant night, since they are without a divine poet (to chronicle their deeds).
Let him who has once perceived how much that, which has been discarded, excels that which he has longed for, return at once, and seek again that which he despised.
Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.
In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the attention and interest, in real time.
To see Good Tennis! What divine joy Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ? Let other people play at other things; The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.
While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
Alas! we see that the small have always suffered for the follies of the great. [Fr., Helas! on voit que de tout temps Les Petits ont pati des sottises des grands.]
I wish, and I wish that the spring would go faster, Nor long summer bide so late; And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster, For some things are ill to wait.
The gold-barr'd butterflies to and from And over the waterside wander'd and wove As heedless and idle as clouds that rove And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.
Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows, And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close; Why are we fond of toil and care? Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?
... the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.
Well blest is he who has a dear one dead; A friend he has whose face will never change- A dear communion that will not grow strange; The anchor of a love is death.
Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.
There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order; only a conviction, accepted by our knowledge and judgment, that it is so.
All ye that pass by! While we least think it he prepares his Mate. Mate, and the King's pawn played, it never ceases, Though all the earth is dust of taken pieces.
For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands.
For the air of youth, Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign A melancholy damp of cold and dry To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume The balm of life.