Helen > Helen's Quotes

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.”
― Gilda Radner

“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

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L'Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw: Two Novels in One Volume

“Friends.
They aren’t any such thing as good friend or bad friend.
Maybe there are just friend.
People who stand by you when you're hurt and who helped you feel not so lonely.
Maybe there are worth being scared for and hoping for and living for.
Maybe worth dying for too.
If that what has to be.
No bad friends.
Only people you want.
Need to be with.
People who build their houses in your heart.”
― Stephen King

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“I suggest we embrace the phrase, "I don't know." It seems to get a bad rap, but "I don't know" is a respectable answer when one "doesn't know”
― Guy P. Harrison

“Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Logic in all its infinite potential, is the most dangerous of vices. For one can always find some form of logic to justify his action, and rest comfortably in the assurance, that what he did abides by reason. That is why, for us brittle beings, Intention is the only true weapon of peace.”
― Ilyas Kassam

“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
― Deepak Chopra

“What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.”
― Albert Einstein

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Collected Works

“I hate organized religion. I hate that people use it to justify their crappy, bigoted beliefs.”
― Hannah Harrington, Saving June

“It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.”
― Mike Norton

“Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.”
― Daniel Handler

“Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be acheived unless we first establish peace within our own minds. We can send so-called 'peacekeeping forces' into areas of conflict, but peace cannot be oppossed from the outside with guns. Only by creating peace within our own mind and helping others to do the same can we hope to achieve peace in this world.”
― Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey

“These religious types were the fans that Jesus seems to have the most trouble with. Fans who will walk into a restaurant and bow their heads to pray before a meal just in case someone is watching. Fans who won’t go to R-rated movies at the theater, but have a number of them saved on their DVR at home. Fans who may feed the hungry and help the needy, and then they make sure they work it into every conversation for the next two weeks. Fans who make sure people see them put in their offering at church, but they haven’t considered reaching out to their neighbor who lost a job and can’t pay the bills. Fans who like seeing other people fail because in their minds it makes them look better. Fans whose primary concern in raising their children is what other people think. Fans who are reading this and assuming I’m describing someone else. Fans who have worn the mask for so long they have fooled even themselves.”
― Kyle Idleman

“Some religions actually go so far as to label anyone who belongs to a religious sect other than their own a heretic, even though the overall doctrines and impressions of godliness are nearly the same. For example: The Catholics believe the Protestants are doomed to Hell simply because they do not belong to the Catholic Church. In the same way, many splinter groups of the Christian faith, such as the evangelical or revivalist churches, believe the Catholics worship graven images. (Christ is depicted in the image that is most physiologically akin to the individual worshipping him, and yet the Christians criticize "heathens" for the worship of graven images.) And the Jews have always been given the Devil's name.”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

“The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep.

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”
― Lemony Snicket

“But there are times when the little cloud spreads, until it obscures the sky. And those times I look around at my fellow men and I am reminded of some likeness of the beast-people, and I feel as though the animal is surging up in them. And I know they are neither wholly animal nor holy man, but an unstable combination of both.”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau