Jeena Papaadi > Jeena's Quotes

“IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO NATIONS. ONE WAS A vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swathe of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“Chance encounters are what keep us going.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the 'size' of human suffering is absolutely relative".”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.
From this one may see that there is no reason to pity the old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that: Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past -the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized -and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“This is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete, if you are alive, it isn't.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Superstition brings bad luck.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“I will tell you the deeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole in the top, also, the water spurts out below."
"Isn't that obvious?" I said. "Air enters at the top and presses the water down."
"A typical scientific explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice versa. The question is not why the water comes out in the second place, but why it refuses to come out in the first case."
"And why does it refuse?" Garamond asked eagerly.
"Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modern science has forgotten."
"Excuse me," Belbo said to Agliè, "but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before.
You must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“They dwell in my light, while I dwell in unbearable darkness, the source of that light.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear.”
― Tao Te Ching