Thread: Favorite Quotations

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

― Oscar Wilde

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us. Jane Austen

I always thought this was a neat quote. Sadly can't remember the name of the book.

If God would choose a plant to represent him, I think he would choose of all plants the cactus. The cactus has all the blessings he tried, but mostly failed, to give to man. Let me tell you how. It has humility, but it is not submissive. It grows where no other plant will grow. It does not complain when the sun bakes it back or the wing tears it from the cliff or drowns it in the dry sand of the desert or when it is thirsty. When the rain comes it stores water for the hard times to come. In good times and in bad it will still flower. It protects itself against danger, but it harms no other plant. It adapts perfectly to almost any environment. It has patience and enjoys solitude. In Mexico there is a cactus that flowers only once every hundred years and at night. This is saintliness of an extraordinary kind, would you not agree? The cactus has properties that heal the wounds of men and from it come potions that can make man touch the face of God or stare into the mouth of hell. It is the plant of patience and solitude, love and madness, ugliness and beauty, toughness and gentleness. Of all plants, surely God made the cactus in his own image?

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. But those with the courage to tread on this real path to discovery are offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.

-G. Spencer Brown in Laws of Form

Marcel Proust is a well of great aphorisms:


“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”


“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favourite book.”

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”

“Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.”

“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”

“Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.”

Originally Posted by StephL

Marcel Proust is a well of great aphorisms:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”

Thank you Steph for great material...always in various threads. The first sentence is exactly how I have been feeling lately, discovered thanks to practices towards lucid dreaming and the lucid dreams themselves. The second sentence serves as a reminder that the process does not have to end with my current stage of seeing things.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It's that they can't see the problem. - G. K. Chesterton

A few from A Raisin in the Sun:

Mama, you don’t understand. It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t acept. It’s not important. I an not going out and commit crimes or be immoral because I don’t believe in God. I don’t even think about it. It’s just that I get so tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles!

There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

And probably the best one in there:

DAMN MY EGGS! DAMN ALL THE EGGS THAT EVER WAS!

Truth is a mobile army of metaphors. Friedrich Nietzsche

"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains."

Rosa Luxemburg

“I believe that happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it; that nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness."
―André Gide (The Immoralist)

"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 (The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― André Gide (Autumn Leaves)

"Did you know humans frown on weight variances? If you want to upset a human, just tell them that their weight variance is above or below the norm."

-GLaDOS

"The journey of a thousand miles begins when you buy the plane tickets"

-Me

"Herryour Sandwich"

-Random guy in a dream I had when I was a kid.

"Who would try to join the gaaa... Oh, Poops on a Stick!!"

-Hudson from Halo 3 LoL.

"I've seen these two cats meow... And it's gonna be a fancy feast tonight!"

-Games Dean from VGHS

"Keep your friends close and your enemies dead."

-Unknown, but I like it.

"Violence Is Golden "

-My Cousin

And the one in my mah new signature!

...and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.


The heaviest burden: “What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?


Nietsche again.
While looking up the first one, I found and felt inspired by contemplating the second.
This transformation of having only one shot at it surprised me and drives home a powerful point.

That is a really great thought invoking quote steph.

I read a good quote from one of Wordsworth's poems but I can't remember which poem...

It's not a question
of can or can't
there are some things
in life you just do

Lightning FFXIII

"if you're cooking a spaghetti and the water wouldn't boil
how about lighting on the fire, for this is what everybody would do"

translated from the lyrics of "kan Kavur Hakekev" [=here the dog is burried] by Kaveret band

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed."
— Mark Twain

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

Anaïs Nin, on dreams:

"The dream, scrutinized by scientists in various experiments, has been found to be an absolute necessity of man."

"We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality, and reality upon dream"

"The earth is heavy and opaque without dreams."

"Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness."

"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."

"The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle."

Spoiler for more Nin, please!:

"Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage."

"To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you."

"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."

"Passion gives me moments of wholeness."

"I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images pass by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy."

"Everything but happiness is neurosis."

"You live out the confusions, until they become clear."

Originally Posted by StephL

Marcel Proust is a well of great aphorisms:

...
“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”

???

from "time and a word" by "yes":

Have you heard of a time that will help us get it together again?
Have you heard of the word that will stop us going wrong?
Well, the time is near and the word you'll hear
When you get things in perspective.
Spread the news and help the word go round.

There's a time and the time is now and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the time is now.
There's a word and the word is love and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the word is love.

Have you heard of a time that will help get it together again?
Have you heard of the word that will stop us going wrong?
Well, the time is near and the word you'll hear
When you get things in perspective.
Spread the news and help the word go round.

There's a time and the time is now and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the time is now.
There's a word and the word is love and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the word is love.
There's a time and the time is now and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the time is now.
There's a word and the word is love and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the word is love.
https://bop.fm/s/yes/time-and-a-word...rics.wikia.com

and here is a you tube version:

"You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you.

This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions." - Zorba The Buddha


Edit: Sorry for the long quote, but my life has been very miserable... But this strikes my heart and I actually cried when I read this because I felt love in my heart, and that has not happend too often in my life.

Edit: Sorry for the long quote, but my life has been very miserable... But this strikes my heart and I actually cried when I read this because I felt love in my heart, and that has not happend too often in my life.

yeah i can relate. sometimes its a lyric in a song or a quote from a movie said at just the right time that will have me melt.

Various thoughts on everyday happiness:

When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness is the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.

- John Lennon

The reason so many people find it hard so to be happy is that they will always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.

-via kushandwizdom

Do you want to be happy? Let go of what's gone, be grateful for what remains, and look forward to what is coming.

-via kushandwizdom

"What day is it?"
"It's today" squeaked Piglet.
"My favorite day!" said Pooh.

- A.A. Milne