At 3 p.m. today, I became 54.
Years, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars.
For those of you who know me, you understand that I write in notebooks. Black Moleskin notesbooks. Every day. All year round.
I find quotes, and write them down. I make up quotes, and scribble them in.
Here are 54 of them that I have gathered over the last year, a list in no particular order, a collection of words written for the most part by people so much wiser than I can ever hope to be.
- "As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary." - Hemingway
- "He is able who thinks he is able." - Buddha
- "Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." - John Muir
- "Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters." - Victor Hugo
- "You cannot travel the path before you have become The Path itself." - Buddah
- "When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it's his duty." - G.B. Shaw
- "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." - Buddha
- "A writer is dear and necessary to us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul." - Tolstoy
- "Turn your face to the sun, and the shadows fall behind you." - Maori Proverb
- "In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you." - Tolstoy
- "Take eloquence, and wring its neck." - Paul Verlaine, French poet
- "He who finds a thought that enables him to obtain a slightly deeper glimpse into the eternal secrets of nature has been given great grace." - Einstein
- "In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- "My life has taught me to be more curious than afraid." - Ishi
- "But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads." - Albert Camus
- "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past." - Maurice Maeterlinck
- "Young people do not perceive at once that the giver of wounds is the enemy." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- "Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear." - Ezra Pound
- "Never go on trips with anyone you do not love." - Ernest Hemingway
- "Work out your own salvation. Don't depend on others." - Buddha
- "All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time." - Hemingway
- "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." - Hemingway
- "To be successful in writing, use short sentences." - Hemingway
- "Never mistake motion for action." - Hemingway
- "The biggest temptation is to settle for too little." - Thomas Merton
- "I had nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion." - Jack Kerouac
- "People living deeply have no fear of death." - Anais Nin
- "A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." - Oliver Wendall Holmes
- "Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there." - Bonnie Raitt
- "If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty." - Rilke
- "Own only what you can always carry with you; know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- "But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest." - Buddha
- "Could it think, the heart would stop beating." - Fernando Pessoa
- "A nation that keeps its eye on the past is wise. A nation that keeps two eyes on the past is blind." - Quote written on the wall of a pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland, posted on Twitter by NGS Travel Editor
- "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." - Andre Gide, French writer
- "If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without." - Henry Miller
- "If we are in harmony with life, life will keep us alive." - George Dibbern
- "Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace." - Victor Hugo
- "There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting." - Buddha
- "As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest upon this earth." - Mircea Eliade
- "The whole soulmates idea...is really most useful when you are stealing someone's husband. It is not so good when someone might be stealing yours." - Maile Meloy, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
- "We've all got our good sides and our bad sides. If you want to have joy and love in this lifetime, you've got to live by mercy." - Rhett Ellis
- "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify." - Thoreau
- "Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing." - Henry Miller
- "One's greatest security is to be loved. Banks fail, love never." - George Dibbern
- "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." - George Bernard Shaw
- "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." - Dorothy Parker
- "A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." - Dorothy Parker
- "Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken." - Jack Kerouac
- "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen
- "...But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face..." - W.B. Yeats
- "Always do what you are afraid to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "It is only when you realize that you don't belong to anyone or anything and that you truly own nothing, it is then that your life begins to make any sense. You only belong to something bigger...God, nature, whatever you want to call it. It is then that you have learned to write your name in the dark." - MPG
Wonderful quotes, Mary...and a very happy birthday to you!
Posted by: Genie | July 20, 2009 at 06:41 PM