Joyce > Joyce's Quotes

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
― Toni Morrison

“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”
― Rumi

“I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”
― Rumi

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― Rumi

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”
― Rumi

“Put your thoughts to sleep,
do not let them cast a shadow
over the moon of your heart.
Let go of thinking.”
― Rumi

“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
― Rumi

“There's a field somewhere
beyond all doubt and wrong doing.
I'll meet you there.”
― Rumi

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment”
― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
― Hermann Hesse

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale