Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again,”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Only recently the notion came to me of swimming upstream, against the tide of decay and degradation, the slow and subtle ebbing away of order; the way that every day in every way you and I are getting worse, losing ground, memory, teeth, and the battle just to stay as we are, let alone get better.”
― Vincent Deary, How We Are

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“If my aim is to prove I am “enough,” the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Knowledge only progresses by making mistakes as fast as possible.”
― John Wheeler physicist

“We suffer because we overlook the fact that, at heart, we are all right.”
― Douglas E. Harding, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

“All fiction that does not violate the laws of physics is fact.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

“She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by-
And never knew.”
― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

“Dearest Cecilia, the story can resume. The one I had been planning on that evening walk. I can become again the man who once crossed the surrey park at dusk, in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life. The man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library. The story can resume. I will return. Find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“You haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where gravity has failed twice in different directions.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“I lost a head and gained the world.”
― Douglas E. Harding, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
― Timothy Leary

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.”
― David Bohm

“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“The world is violent and mercurial--it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love--love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
― Tennessee Williams

“A Prayer for The Wild at Heart

A prayer for the wild at heart
Kept in cages
I know how you long
To run wild and free
To feel your blood pumping
To hear your heart beating faster
Yet you can’t
For you are locked inside a prison
One that you will never escape
I can hear your howls of pain
And your growls of frustration
Pacing back and forth
Clawing at the bars
Tearing at your skin
Begging to be set free
Your eyes are wild of full hate
You face bears no smile
Only a snarl of anger

Blood drips from your hands
Blood from the people
Who didn’t understand
Your fearful whimpers fill the air
As you look to the full moon
And let out a mournful howl
Your voice gets louder
As I and the others join in
We let our pleads fill the night
As we sit in our cold cages
Praying someone will hear

- Tennessee Williams”
― Tennessee Williams, Stairs to the Roof

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

Truly yours,
Albert Camus”

I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.”
― Albert Camus