Kathy > Kathy's Quotes

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  • #1
    David Sedaris
    “If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
    David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

  • #2
    David Foster Wallace
    “Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"

    "I give."

    "You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”
    David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

  • #3
    John Muir
    “On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.”
    John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf: The American Naturalist's 1867 Journey Through the Post-War South

  • #4
    Henry David Thoreau
    “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
    Henry David Thoreau

  • #5
    Alexandra Potter
    “And so taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself.
    For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee.”
    Alexandra Potter, The Two Lives of Miss Charlotte Merryweather

  • #6
    Mia Farrow
    “I get it now; I didn't get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible...and enjoying everything in between.”
    Mia Farrow

  • #7
    John Muir
    “The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
    John Muir

  • #8
    Oliver Burkeman
    “And here lies the essential between Stoicism and the modern-day 'cult of optimism.' For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the excitable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word, 'happiness.' And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances.”
    Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

  • #9
    Mary Oliver
    “I Worried"

    I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
    flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
    as it was taught, and if not how shall
    I correct it?

    Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
    can I do better?

    Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
    can do it and I am, well,
    hopeless.

    Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
    am I going to get rheumatism,
    lockjaw, dementia?

    Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
    And gave it up. And took my old body
    and went out into the morning,
    and sang.”
    Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

  • #10
    Eleanor Roosevelt
    “You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude”
    Eleanor Roosevelt

  • #11
    Eleanor Roosevelt
    “Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”
    Eleanor Roosevelt

  • #12
    Jeanette Winterson
    “What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”
    Jeanette Winterson

  • #13
    Roy T. Bennett
    “Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.”
    Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

  • #14
    James Baldwin
    “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
    James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

  • #15
    R. Buckminster Fuller
    “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
    Richard Buckminster Fuller



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