🌲 > 🌲's Quotes

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When I'm working in the barn or house I often think of all the errors I've made in my life. But then I quickly put that behind me and think of water lilies. They will always eradicate unpleasant thoughts. Or goslings are equally comforting in their own way.”
― Tasha Tudor, The Private World of Tasha Tudor

“I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

“I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!”
― Tove Jansson, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 01

“Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“Hitoshi:

I'll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven't a choice. I go.

One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I've yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.

I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you.

For waving good-bye, I thank you.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“If I look back I am lost.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.”
― Anne Rice, The Witching Hour

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
― niels bohr

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

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

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― haruki murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.”
― José Saramago, Death with Interruptions

“Desde o princípio que nós não temos feito outra cousa que contradizer as realidade, e aqui estamos, Que irá dizer o papa, Se eu o fosse, perdoe-me deus a estulta vaidade de pensar-me tal, mandaria pôr imediatamente em circulação uma nova tese, a da morte adiada, Sem mais explicações, A igreja nunca se lhe pediu que explicasse fosse o que fosse, a nossa outra especialidade, além da balística, te sido neutralizar, pela fé, o espírito curioso”
― José Saramago, Death with Interruptions

“Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Hitoshi:

Não posso mais ficar aqui. A cada momento eu sigo em frente. É impossível deter o fluxo do tempo, não tenho escolha. Eu vou.
Uma caravana pára e outra parte. Ainda há pessoas que tenho que conhecer, outras que jamais voltarei a encontrar. Pessoas que passam por mim sem que eu o perceba, pessoas com quem cruzo apenas. Mas á medida que as cumprimento, tenho a sensação de que ficam mais transparentes. Devo viver com os olhos voltados para a corrente do rio.
Peço-lhe, do coração, que guarde para sempre junto de você a imagem da garota que eu fui.
Obrigada por te-se despedido de mim acenando.
Por ter-se despedido acenando muitas, muitas vezes.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“This isn't the kind of story where understanding makes you smart, or not understanding makes you dumb.”
― CLAMP, xxxHOLiC, Vol. 2

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”
― Dan Brown, Digital Fortress

“Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run, is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain. The recent debunking of beliefs that invite or tolerate violence call to mind Voltaire's quip that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

“. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better. ”
― Jose Saramago / ژوزه ساراماگو

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
― Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy