Swati > Swati's Quotes

“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“If I could take a bite of the whole world
And feel it on my palate
I’d be more happy for a minute or so...
But I don’t always want to be happy.
Sometimes you have to be
Unhappy to be natural...

Not every day is sunny.
When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.
So I take unhappiness with happiness
Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange
That there are mountains and plains
And that there are cliffs and grass...

What you need is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel like someone seeing,
To think like someone walking,
And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...
That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“Be a lover of the world, it is the only way to survive in it.”
― Janosch

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
― Pema Chodron

“Instead she was a spectator—a strange woman in a bathrobe, watching through the window. But she was going to get her life back. That was exactly what she’d come to Pleasant Court to do.”
― Sally Hepworth, The Family Next Door

“The more I work on happiness- the more I realize that you can’t seek happiness, you can’t find happiness- you simply have to remember to be happy.”
― Smitha Murthy

“Lead a life of wonder and not wondering”
― Smitha Murthy

“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

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
― Kobayashi Issa, Poems

“It’s always seemed to me—and as I get older, I feel this even more intensely—that kindness to other people comes with its own reward. It can be immediately felt. And the only thing I can see that a belief in divinity makes possible in this world is a right toward cruelty—the belief in an afterlife being the real life … not here. People need a sense of righteousness to take things from others … to carry out violence. Divinity gives them that. It creates the reins for cruelty …”
― Catherine Lacey, Pew