Rod > Rod's Quotes

“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

“If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“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

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap. I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun?”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“...he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.