Knowing And Doing Quotes (page 72)
-
-
-
but what is it you wanted to learn from the teachings and teachers, and those who taught you so much, what could they not teach you?" and he concluded: "it was the i, whose meaning and essence i wanted to learn. it was the i, from which i wanted release, which i wanted to conquer. but i could not conquer it, i could only deceive it, only flee from it, only hide myself from it. truly, nothing in the world has taken up so much of my thinking as this i of mine, this conundrum, that i am...
Herman Hesse
Father! Whom I do not know! Father! who filled all my soul and who has now turned His countenance away from me! Call me to You! Be silent no longer! Your silence will not stay this thirsting soul—and could a person, a father, be angry whose son, unexpectedly returning, threw himself on his neck and cried: Father! I have come back! Don’t be angry that I am breaking off the travels that you meant for me to endure longer. The world is everywhere the same, in effort and work, reward and joy, but...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all "direct" persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots. But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the creamatorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up and I think that there are...
Mark Haddon
Rememeber this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe...
Chuck Palahniuk
So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after and judged by these standards, which I do not defend, the bullfight is very normal to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but also very fine.
Ernest Hemingway
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true...
Isaac Asimov
The thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've...
Don DeLillo
But somebody said there was billions bet on this. You'd think they'd be lined up three deep the whole way. And that there'd be TV coverage"It's discouraged."Why?"Why ask me?"Because you know," Garraty said, exasperated."How do you know?"Jesus, you remind me of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, sometimes," Garraty said. "Don't you ever just talk?
Stephen King
Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine cone
You never know
What opportunity
Is going to travel to you,
Or through you.
Once a friend gave me
A small pine cone-
One of a few
He found in the scat
Of a grizzly
In Utah maybe,
Or Wyoming.
I took it home
And did what I supposed
He was sure I would do-
I ate it,
Thinking
How it had traveled
Through that rough
And holy body.
It was crisp and sweet.
It was almost a prayer
Without words.
My gratitude, Tom...
Mary Oliver
I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.
J. D. Salinger
I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.
Frida Kahlo
Man," he said, "I'm not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want."What do we want?" I asked blurrily."Aw, man, you know," he said. "We just want, well, the same things these people wanted."What was that?"He shrugged. "To live, I guess," he said.
Michael Cunningham