Day Life Quotes (page 36)
Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd. As herds of bellowing buses drive by. Love's anguish tightens your throat. As if you were never to be loved again. If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery. You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer. You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles. The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life. It's a painting hanging in a dark museum. And sometimes you go and look at it...
Guillaume Apollinaire
All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
Mark Helprin
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' ... 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.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a caf. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. ...
Jeanette Winterson
CHORUS: You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
Sophocles
Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind....
Renata Adler
If you ever loved anything in your life, try to remember it. If you ever betrayed anything, pretend for a moment that you have been forgiven. If you ever feared anything, pretend for an instant that those days are gone and will never return. Buy the lie and hold to it for as long as you can. Press your familiar, whatever its name, to your breast and stroke it till it purrs.
Roger Zelazny
Well, I started out down a dirty road. Started out all alone. And the sun went down as I crossed the hill. And the town lit up, the world got still. I'm learning to fly but I ain't got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing. Well, the good ol' days may not return. And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn. I'm learning to fly but I ain't got wings. Coming down is the hardest thing. Well, some say life will beat you down. Break your heart, steal your crown. So I've started out for God...
Tom Petty
he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.
Henry David Thoreau