librarianka > librarianka's Quotes

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Before researchers become researches they should become philosophers.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka

“One discovers that destiny can be diverted, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. Once the deforming mirror has been smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness. There is a possibility of joy.”
― Anais Nin

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“... to me, a restaurant with no menu, headed by a chef I trusted, would be ideal. In such a utopia, guests could specify deathly allergies, hunger level, and time constraints, but then they would unfurl their napkin and surrender".”
― Phoebe Damrosch, Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“Question: I am interested in so many things, and I have a terrible fear because my mother keeps telling me that I'm just going to be exploring the rest of my life and never get anything done. But I find it really hard to set my ways and say, "Well, do I want to do this, or should I try to exploit that, or should I escape and completely do one thing?"

Anaïs Nin: One word I would banish from the dictionary is 'escape.' Just banish that and you'll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you're in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything.... We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one's sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted for what we try and if it's what we want to do.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
― Anais Nin

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experience. The results are arranged for the convenience of research, not according to the needs of the farmer.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth

“It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

“All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Only if we manage to see the universe as a single entity, in which every part reflects the whole and whose great beauty lies precisely in its variety, will we be able to understand exactly who and where we are.

Letters agains the war: Letter from Orsigna, 2001.”
― Tiziano Terzani

“Ah yes, the facts. I've spent my whole life running after them, convinced that if I found demonstrable, incontrovertible facts I would also find some kind of truth. Now aged sixty-three, faced with this war which has only just begun and with an unsettling premonition of what is soon to follow, I'm beginning to think the facts are just a front and that the truth they mask is at best like a Russian doll: as soon as you open it up you find a smaller one inside, then another which is even smaller, then another and another, till finally all you are left with is something the size of a grain.

Letters against the war: Letter from Quetta, 2011.”
― Tiziano Terzani

“Great material progress has not been matched by great spiritual progress. Quite the opposite. Indeed, from this point of view perhaps man has never been so poor as since he became so rich.

Letters against the war: Letter from the Himalayas, 2008.”
― Tiziano Terzani

“It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“Fred Astaire. Not a handsome man. He said himself he couldn’t sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs, with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures. When you saw Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth, from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That’s the gospel truth. St Fred. Fred the Redeemer.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“It’s funny how you can be all alone and in danger and then a minute later feel totally safe, like you’ve never been lonely before.”
― Susan Juby, Home to Woefield

“Can you dance?
Of course, I said, even though I can’t really. I think enthusiasm counts for a lot in dancing and in life.”
― Susan Juby, Home to Woefield

“I’ve always wanted to be self-sustaining and able to grow my own food. All I lack is land and skill.”
― Susan Juby

“It’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt even if they don’t deserve it.”
― Susan Juby, Home to Woefield

“This sky, Sid.It's the sky of the great epics.The great Polish epics. Of Pan Tadeusz”
― Esi Edugyan

“Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“There's all sorts of ways to live, Chip. Some of them you give a lot. Some of them you take a lot. Art, jazz, it was a kind of taking. You take from the audience, you take from yourself.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues