Books Ring My Bell's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 61)

"Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you."
— Laozi

tags: contentment
73 people liked it

"I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."
— Laozi

10 people liked it

"Let us read and let us dance — two amusements that will never do any harm to the world."
— Voltaire

tags: dance, dancing, reading
541 people liked it

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: creation, god, humor, man
780 people liked it

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: belief, death, ideals, martyr, truth
753 people liked it

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: friends
2,214 people liked it

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

tags: einstein, human, humor, infinity, nature, philosophy, science, stupidity, universe
11,842 people liked it

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
— Edgar Allan Poe

tags: insanity, sanity
795 people liked it

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'"
— Isaac Asimov

tags: science
213 people liked it

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up."
— Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)

tags: books, reading
741 people liked it

"If we couldnt laugh we would all go insane"
— Robert Frost

tags: laughter
467 people liked it

"For what is it to die, But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, Then we shall truly dance."
— Kahlil Gibrán

tags: death
85 people liked it

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"
— Kahlil Gibrán

34 people liked it

"A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

13 people liked it

"If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things."
— Daniel C. Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)

tags: inspiration, science
9 people liked it

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
— Richard Dawkins

34 people liked it

"To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: inspiration
188 people liked it

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

tags: love, poetry
2,442 people liked it

"Te amo como se aman ciertas cosa oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
(I love you as certain darks things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.)"
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

tags: love, poetry
373 people liked it

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."
— Pablo Neruda (Love: Ten Poems By Pablo Neruda)

tags: love
207 people liked it

"Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps."
— Pablo Neruda

22 people liked it

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
— Mark Twain

tags: death, life
1,659 people liked it

"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
— Woody Allen

tags: death, fear, humor, life
2,702 people liked it

"If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."
— Woody Allen

tags: atheism, metaphysics, philosophy
113 people liked it

"Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them."
— Albert Camus

tags: philosophy, truth
63 people liked it

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

51 people liked it

"Life is available only in the present moment."
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions)

23 people liked it

"Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

10 people liked it

"Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

5 people liked it

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: lies, lying, trust
1,227 people liked it

"I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God."
— Orson Welles

tags: life
40 people liked it

"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money."
— George Carlin

tags: atheism, humor, life, religion
538 people liked it

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
— Kahlil Gibrán

tags: scars, souls, suffering
170 people liked it

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
— Mark Twain

160 people liked it

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

93 people liked it

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed."
— Edgar Allan Poe

78 people liked it

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

tags: humor, life
8,689 people liked it

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

tags: literacy
6,014 people liked it

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: life
4,205 people liked it

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells."
— Dr. Seuss

tags: fantasy
3,891 people liked it

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)

tags: essential, happiness, love
3,007 people liked it

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

tags: inspirational
778 people liked it

"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?"
— Siddhārtha Gautama

tags: inspirational
383 people liked it

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor, scifi
3,245 people liked it

"Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: gratitude
56 people liked it

"You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance."
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Prophet)

tags: gratitude, prayer
12 people liked it

"I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes"
— Vladimir Nabokov

tags: love, memory
64 people liked it