“At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.”
“Life of Pi,”Yann Martel
Category: Quotable Notables
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a visionary, both politically and spiritually. A pioneer of non-violent resistance, he paved the way for a how conflicts can be settled without resorting to violence.
His words on individual and moral integrity are as impactful today as when he first spoke them, particularly for anyone going through hard ethical and spiritual dilemmas, and serve as a reminder to all of us that one can find the balance to be gentle in action, but strong in conviction.
“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”
“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.”
“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
“A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.”
“Action expresses priorities.”
“All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.”
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.”
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”
“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”
“Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.”
“Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”
“Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.”
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”
“Each one prays to God according to his own light.”
“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.”
“Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.”
“I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.”
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
When thinking of a brilliant mind, one immediately calls to mind Albert Einstein. Even if one is not a scientist, he can be admired and respected: as a professional, he utterly revolutionized his field, never stopped thinking and expanding the boundaries set by his predecessors.
Not only was Einstein an incredibly brilliant theoretical physicist, but his insights into life, logic and spirituality were both elegant and enlightening, and give further evidence to the brilliance that he contained within himself. He was and remains an inspiration and a marvel; a man whose simplicity, intelligence, and kindness we can all aspire to.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
“I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
Bold, confidant, and beautiful – Katherine Hepburn was a woman before her time. With swagger and wit, she carved out for herself a career during a time when a woman was supposed to merely follow the prescribed path. With her sharp slacks, dramatic demeanor and that breathy, enigmatic voice, she carved herself into an icon, and her memorable words are as potent as the memory she left on our cultural psyche.
“As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.”
“Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking.”
“Never complain. Never explain.”
“Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.”
“If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
“Enemies are so stimulating.”
“To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.”
“As one goes through life one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.”
“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.”
“Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.”
“Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.”
“If you’re given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal.”
“Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I’ve had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got to not forget to laugh.”
“If you survive long enough, you’re revered – rather like an old building.”
“There are no laurels in life … just new challenges.”
“It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.”
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”
“I don’t think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.”
“I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.”
“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around.”
“I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.”
Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite writers. His writing contains a simplicity, elegance and wisdom that has rarely been matched before or since: he is truly the great American writer. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is one of my favorite short stories, and a beautiful example of the profound power Hemingway is able to portray simply by revealing a small moment to the reader.
Hemingway’s quotes share humor and truth, and wise insights on writing. Sometimes painfully true, sometimes good for a laugh, but always strong, and sure and brave.
“All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.”
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
“Courage is grace under pressure.”
“Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.”
“For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.’
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.”
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”
“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
“Never confuse movement with action.”
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”
“That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.”
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”
“You’re beautiful, like a May fly.”
Not only was Coco Chanel a marvelous designer, but she had some fantastic insights into life through her words. Here are a few of my favorite Coco-isms…
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
“As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!””
“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.”
“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
“Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”
“There are people who have money and people who are rich.”
“Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.”
“Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.”
“Elegance is refusal.”
“It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure.”
Also, how stunning is Audrey Tatou as Chanel?
I admit it – I am a sucker for quotes. There’s something so admirable in their ability to encapsulate an idea in a easy sentence or two. They may dip into cliche, but cliche is powerful because it is often true – and I personally love them as well. Here are a few of my favorite in terms of fashion and style:
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”
- Coco Chanel
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos.”
- Rene Konig
“”Style” is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style.”
- John Fairchild quotes
“Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it’s an open mind”
- Gail Rubin Bereny quotes
“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common – this is my symphony.”
- William Ellery Channing quotes
What are your personal quotes?
Living Hope, 1 Peter 1:3-9 VerseVisions
Originally uploaded by Marketseq
Apologies for the late post today: I am sadly a bit under the weather. However, I will be back tomorrow with all sorts of wonderful for my lovelies.
In the meantime, I leave you with these wonderful quotes by Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Bukowski:
“If we listened to our intellect we’d never have a love affair, we’d never have a friendship, we’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well that’s just nonsense! You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build wings on the way down.”
- Ray Bradbury
The young poet should stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what’s happening around the corner. And bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.
- Charles Bukowski
Victorian Fairy Portrait
Originally uploaded by ex.libris
Over the past week, I find myself continually returning to read this collection of “Predictions of the year 2000″ from the Ladies Home Journal of 1900. These predictions, written in that turn-of-the-century style that I could just eat up with a spoon, are as insightful as they are entertaining to read 100 years after they were written. Some are quite remarkably on the money, such as:
Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic.
Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago.
Prediction #25: Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days.
While others show as just how much farther we have to go…
Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large.
Prediction #17: A university education will be free to every man and woman…Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses…In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.
Read the whole set of predictions here
“carlatattoo4 butterfly tattoo” by Beautiful wwworld’s
I have recently been reading “Moby Dick,” and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is not simply a book as an almanac to the mystical moments surrounding every second of our lives.
One of my favorite characters in the book is Queequeg, the heavily tattooed harpooner and close friend of the narrator, Ishmael.
Being a rather tattooed person myself, I was struck by this one passage about Queequeg and his tattoos. To me, it encapsulates what is so wonderful about this timeless artform…
“…this tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wonderous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even he himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unresolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg – “Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”
