Why Quotes (page 185)
What I have lately said of painting is equally true with respect to poetry. It is only necessary for us to know what is really excellent, and venture to give it expression; and that is saying much in few words. To-day I have had a scene, which, if literally related, would, make the most beautiful idyl in the world. But why should I talk of poetry and scenes and idyls? Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.
Robert M. Pirsig
That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man ... that made the best of the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice thing which we thought our own ... will fall off some...
C. S. Lewis
Still is the night, it quiets the streets down, In that window my love would appear; She's long since gone away from this town, But this house where she lived still remains here. A man stands here too, staring up into space, And wrings his hands with the strength of his pain: It chills me, when I behold his pale face. For the moon shows me my own features again! You spirit double, you specter with my face. Why do you mock my love-pain so. That tortured me here, here in this place. So many...
Heinrich Heine
One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, I hope that you will love me for no good reason. But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another – to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers. Especially to strangers, who have neither good nor bad reasons to love us. And it’s why we tell each other stories that we pray will be transformed in the telling by that angel on the roof, made believable and about us all, no matter who we...
Russell Banks
The power of words is awful, Frida. Sometimes I want to bury my typewriter in a box of quilts. The radio makes everything worse, because of the knack for amplifying dull sounds. Any two words spoken in haste might become law of the land. But you never know which two. You see why I won't talk to newsmen.
Barbara Kingsolver