Elvan > Elvan's Quotes

“What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.”
― Ali Smith, There But For The

“What would happen if you did just shut a door and stop speaking? Hour after hour after hour of no words. Would you speak to yourself? Would words just stop being useful? Would you lose language altogether? Or would words mean more, would they start to mean in every direction, all somersault and assault, like a thuggery of fireworks? Would they proliferate, like untended plantlife? Would the inside of your head overgrow with every word that has ever come into it, every word that has ever silently taken seed or fallen dormant? Would your own silence make other things noisier? Would all the things you’d ever forgotten, all layered there inside you, come bouldering up and avalanche you?”
― Ali Smith, There But For The

“Sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone's saviour.”
― Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.
Let it teach you Being.
Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.
Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon.
It is also insane.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not "fit in" with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream
of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet”
― Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Failures lies concealed in every success in every failure.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“The highest result of education is tolerance”
― Helen Keller

“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”
― Helen Keller

“Relationships are like Rome -- difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the 'golden age', and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt... that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soul mate, and your love.”
― Helen Keller

“Well, sometimes home is a person.”
― Beth Revis, A Million Suns

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion and the beginning of morality”
― Ian McEwan

“Hate is a lack of imagination.”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
― Voltaire

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
― Robertson Davies

“Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest