Zach C > Zach's Quotes

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
― David Foster Wallace , This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Let go of your mind and then be mindful.
Close your ears and listen!”
― Rumi, Love's Ripening: Rumi on the Heart's Journey

“Beauty makes promises that beauty cant keep.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

“And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“all streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. humility gives it its power. if you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. if you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don’t know. Let us sleep on God and mystery, a quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, behold sleep.”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

“Maybe with good luck we’ll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.”
― Wes Anderson, The French Dispatch

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you
prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and
close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is
in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life.”
― John Barth, The Floating Opera

“For all dead loves and all remembered things. I have travelled through many seas.”
― Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I'm glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt?”
― David Sedaris, Holidays on Ice

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“When you look at sand do you see its relation to water or do you see its imprints of life?”
― Lorin Morgan-Richards

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart...”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Only you can control your future.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.”
― Alan Watts

“And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man