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there is always a gap between intention and action,
life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.
No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering, or the total absence of meaning in their lives.
people always tend to help others – just so that they can feel they are better than they really are
a lot of people she knew would talk about the horrors in other people’s lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others, because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them.
‘Anyone who lives in their own world is mad.
real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.
she didn’t struggle and so she didn’t grow:
people never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.
Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you, but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there.’
‘The best way to avoid trouble is to share responsibility,’
‘No one should let themselves get used to anything,
“You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter.
Stop thinking all the time that you’re in the way, that you’re bothering the person next to you. If people don’t like it, they can complain. And if they don’t have the courage to complain, that’s their problem.’
You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you.
stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.
‘We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives,’ said her colleague, ‘except the mistake that destroys us.’
There’s always someone who wants exactly what you want.’
fantasies were electrical impulses from the brain, which, if not realised, released their energy into other areas.
an idea only exists when someone tries to put it into practice.
God was there and yet people believed they still had to go on looking, because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith.
everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone.
normality is merely a matter of consensus, that is, a lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right.
each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that.
after all, diplomacy is also the art of postponing decisions until the problems resolve themselves.
Visions of Paradise were for the chosen few, who appeared in books as heroes and martyrs of the faith in which they believed, people who knew from childhood what the world wanted of them;
people gather together in groups, they build their walls and allow nothing strange to trouble their mediocre existences.
danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort.’
Love is above wisdom,
She would consider each day a miracle, which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.
‘Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.’
