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“The Lord had given them the day and the Lord had given them the strength. And the day and the strength had been dedicated to labor, and the labor was its reward. Who was the labor for? What would be its fruits? These were irrelevant and idle questions.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Such is life, imaginary or otherwise: a continuous parting of ways, a constant flux of approximation and distanciation, lines of fate intersecting at a point which is no-time, a theoretical crossroads fictitiously 'present,' an unstable ice floe forever drifting between was and will be.”
― Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke
“Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
― Stephen R. Covey
“I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
“Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clean, and the town below us seemed like a green harbor full of white sails.”
― Ha Jin, Under the Red Flag
“It dawned on him that he had never loved a woman wholeheartedly and that he had always been the loved one. This must have been the reason why he knew so little about love and women. In other words, emotionally he hadn't grown up. His instinct and ability to love passionately had withered away before they had had an opportunity to blossom. If only he had fallen in love soulfully just once in his life, even though it might have broken his heart, paralyzed his mind, made him live in a daze, bathed his face in tears, and drowned him in despair!”
― Ha Jin
“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
“He can hit a man in the liver so the blood flow stops. It takes a full second before the pain registers and the man falls. I've seen Billy hook men's livers and punch at their hearts. I've seen him break a man's nose in the ring, shatter an eardrum, close an eye. I've seen him hit a man so hard, fist to jaw, the man seemed to fall asleep before he fell, his body so relaxed his face looked calm even when his head slammed against canvas.”
― Adam Berlin, Both Members of the Club
“I ain’t never had me a single round in a professional, boxin’ ring. I’m whatcha call a street fighter, a knuckle brawler. Knives, beer bottles, chairs, chains, rocks, sticks, tire irons, and even teeth. Ya name it. I’ve seen ‘em all. And I tell ya what. When it comes to fightin,’ the quickest way to double your money in a fight is to fold it over. That don’t mean ya give up or quit. It means ya work with whatcha got and whatcha know.”
― Todd Nelsen, Appetite & Other Stories
“The thought cross his mind that he ought to have married her and not gone rambling. If he had, he wouldn't be in such a fix. But he felt little fear; just an overpowering fatigue. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it was too bad, but he couldn't find the energy to fight it any longer.”
― Larry McMurtry
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
― Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle
“Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you;
Be true to your word and your work and your friend;
Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you,
Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.”
― John Boyle O'Reilly, Life of John Boyle O'Reilly
“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.”
― Confucius
“The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia
“Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.”
― Arundhati Roy
"[Bullwinkle is going for a walk in the woods]
Rocky: But Bullwinkle, there aren't any more woods.
Bullwinkle: You don't have to tell me, I'm the Chairman for the Frostbite Falls Society of Wildlife Conversation.
Rocky: You mean wildlife conSERVation.
Bullwinkle: What'd I say?
Rocky: You said wildlife conVERSation.
Bullwinkle: Well, somebody's gonna have to start talking about these things."
- The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
"Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
“A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind. Another question: why do some people remain open and elastic into extreme old age, whereas others become rigid and unproductive before they're fifty?”
― Aldous Huxley, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
“What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.”
― Hermann Hesse
“In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where not even the ashes of his glory would remain.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He’d been assured
this is exactly how a woman’s breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter’s night, holding his wife’s breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared.”
― Mary Ruefle
“Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
To The Whore Who Took My Poems
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; it's stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
- Charles Bukowski