Tapasya > Tapasya's Quotes

“I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.”
― Taylor Swift

“It is true that many young people who wrongly, that is, simply with abandon and unsolitarily, feel the oppressiveness of a failure and want to make the situation in which they have landed viable and fruitful in their own personal way—; for their nature tells them that, less even than all else that is important, can questions of love be solved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case demand a new, special, only personal answer—: but how should they, who have already flung themselves together and no longer mark off and distinguish themselves from each other, who therefore no longer possess anything of their own selves, be able to find a way out of themselves, out of the depth of their already shattered solitude?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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

“A real diamond is never perfect.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“One day, someone will walk into your life and make you see why it never worked out with anyone else.”
― Anonymous

“The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“The Bisy Backson is always going somewhere, somewhere he hasn't been. Anywhere but where he is.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
― Lao Tse

“You make do with what you have. As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“In other words, let's face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won't seem to be worth all that. It's up to each individual to decide whether or not it is.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In dreams begins responsiblities.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free?”
― Haruki Murakami , Kafka on the Shore

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“But people need to cling to something,” Oshima says. “They have to. You’re doing the same, even though you don’t realize it. It’s like Goethe said: Everything’s a metaphor.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure...”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love,
often deciphered by children”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief