Devon > Devon's Quotes

“We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. [S]he said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.”
― Ishmael Beah

“Home is simply a place where your friends wait for you to come back.”
― Nikolai Grozni, Turtle Feet

“Before you can dispel other people's ignorance, you should first dispel your own.”
― Nikolai Grozni, Turtle Feet

“The mind is a strange thing: it works in secret. Oftentimes the most important decisions in life are made while you're not paying attention.”
― Nikolai Grozni, Turtle Feet

“So in reality the one constant is existence- it changes its form, but can never be created or destroyed. And what's more important is that, just like the quantity of energy is a constant, the taste of existence is a constant, too. It can never change. You think it's going to make a difference if you're poor or rich or dying or in hell or in Nirvana, but the fact of the matter is, it never does, the universe is like this metaphysical reactor where opposites cancel each other, pleasure is canceled by pain, highs by lows, reality by emptiness, Enlightenment by inexhaustible boredom, and at the end it all adds up to zero. Heaven isn't going to be too sweet, hell can't be too bad. It's like this: the rich have everything but are desensitized, the lepers have got nothing but are closer to life- they feel every passing moment in their bones. Monks are missing one thing, laypeople are missing another. Ordinary beings are stuck on this shore, the Buddha is stuck on the shore beyond. You could say that everyone is fucked in some way, or you could say that everyone's in a state of equilibrium. It makes no difference, really.”
― Nikolai Grozni, Turtle Feet

“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“All The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' In The Sun,
Talkin' 'Bout The Things
They Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Done...
But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All Ran Away And Hid
From One Little Did.”
― Shel Silverstein

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Time is an illusion that only makes us pant.”
― Yann Martel

“Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

“Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.”
― Okakura Kakuzo

“Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea

“For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea

“Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade- all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, Book of Tea

“We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection... the dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth.”
― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book Of Tea

“A master has always something to offer, while we go hungry solely because of our own lack of appreciation.”
― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book Of Tea

“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”
― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

“Much has been said of the aesthetic values of chanoyu- the love of the subdued and austere- most commonly characterized by the term, wabi. Wabi originally suggested an atmosphere of desolation, both in the sense of solitariness and in the sense of the poverty of things. In the long history of various Japanese arts, the sense of wabi gradually came to take on a positive meaning to be recognized for its profound religious sense. ...the related term, sabi,... It was mid-winter, and the water's surface was covered with the withered leaves of the of the lotuses. Suddenly I realized that the flowers had not simply dried up, but that they embodied, in their decomposition, the fullness of life that would emerge again in their natural beauty.”
― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book Of Tea

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun