Cloud > Cloud's Quotes

“Caro m'è 'l sonno, e più l'esser di sasso,
mentre che 'l danno e la vergogna dura;
non veder, non sentir m'è gran ventura;
però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

(Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.)”
― Thomas a Kempis

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“She had quickly learned that to show unhappiness was to risk the loss of love.”
― P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

“You won't get love from a child if you don't give love.”
― P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

“Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”
― Yasunari Kawabata

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”
― Ann Richards

“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”
― Umberto Eco

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

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Why would a living person worry about what happens after they die? I'll just live freely for as long as possible.”
― 墨香铜臭, 魔道祖师 [Mó Dào Zǔ Shī]

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

“In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend.”
― Solon

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.”
― Solon

“A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“You could get used to anything if you had to.”
― Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

“He had suffered, and he had learnt to think, two advantages that he had never known before…”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“We are born crying, and for good reason,' he reflected. 'And the rest of our lives is bound to be a muted reiteration of that cry.”
― Françoise Sagan, Dans un mois, dans un an

“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”
― Stephen King, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

“The one standing in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is ‘you’ and not the state of you.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

“Only after having met you did I rediscover that it's such a simple thing to be happy.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

“Young man, there are two cringe-worthy phrases in one’s life that must be said, no matter what.”

“Which two?”

“‘Thank you’, and 'I’m sorry’.”

“What can anybody do to me if I don’t say them?”

“Someday, you’ll say those words in tears.”
― Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, 魔道祖师 [Mó Dào Zǔ Shī]