Our Lives Quotes - Page 3

• Venice is ever the fragile labyrinth at the edge of the sea and it reminds us how brief and perilous the journeys of our lives are; perhaps that is why we love it so. City of plagues and brief liaisons, city of lingering deaths and incendiary loves, city of chimeras, nightmares, pigeons, bells. You are the only city in the world whose dialect has a word for the shimmer of canal water reflected on the ceiling of a room.

  Erica Jong

  Journey, Sea, Cities

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• In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.

  Erica Jong

  Criticism, World, Made

  Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.17, Penguin

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• we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Ifs

  Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.155, Penguin

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• it is in our minds that we live much of our life.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Mind

  Ivy Compton-Burnett (2011). “A Heritage and its History”, p.23, A&C Black

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• To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.

  John Ruskin

  Men, Yield, World

  John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.225, Courier Corporation

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• And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. A child is not enough. A husband and children, no matter how busy one may be kept by them, are not enough. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.

  Dorothy Day

  Husband, Children, Loneliness

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• The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives.

  Margaret Visser

  Everyday Objects, Granted, Precise

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and-and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another-a sequel-feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

  L. Frank Baum

  Cheer, Tired, Heart

  L. Frank Baum (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of L. Frank Baum (Illustrated)”, p.4750, Delphi Classics

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• It would not be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christ, Virtue, Easy

  John Stuart Mill (1874). “Three Essays on Religion”, p.255, New York : H. Holt

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• By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.

  Etty Hillesum

  Mean, Eye, Reality

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• It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersections, no fish and no ducks. OK?

  Molly Ivins

  Running, Government, Fishing

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• The whole world is absolutely brought up on lies. We are fed nothing but lies. It begins with lies and half our lives we live with lies.

  Isadora Duncan

  Lying, Half, World

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• We cannot make bargains for blisses, / Nor catch them like fishes in nets; / And sometimes the thing our life misses, / Helps more than the thing which it gets.

  Alice Cary

  Happiness, Missing, Helping

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.176

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• During the day, our souls gather their ... impressions of us, how our lives feel. ... Our spirits collect these impressions, keep them together, like wisps of smoke in a bag. Then, when we're asleep, our brains open up these bags of smoke ... and take a look.

  Marsha Norman

  Soul, Brain, Together

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• while everything else in our lives has gotten simpler, speedier, more microwavable and user-friendly, child-raising seems to have expanded to fill the time no longer available for it.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Children, Friendly, Seems

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• The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children ... we have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment of our lives.

  Matthew Arnold

  Children, Nice, Infatuation

  Matthew Arnold (1973). “Complete Prose Works: English literature and Irish politics”

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• Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state.

  Marianne Williamson

  Experience, States, Determine

  Marianne Williamson (1992). “A return to love: reflections on the principles of "A course in miracles"”

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• Most of us feel on some level like race horses chomping at the bit, pressing at the gate, hoping and praying for someone to open the door and let us run out. We feel so much pent up energy, so much locked up talent. We know in our hearts that we were born to do great things, and we have a deep-seated dread of wasting our lives. But the only person who can free us is ourselves. Most of us know that. We realize that the locked door is our own fear.

  Marianne Williamson

  Running, Horse, Heart

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• The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.

  Freya Stark

  Past, Journey, History

  Freya Stark (2011). “The Lycian Shore”, p.32, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.

  Mary McCarthy

  Wall, Gun, Waiting

  Mary McCarthy (1993). “Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936-1938”, Harcourt

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• when people go away, or when we leave the places we love, or something we treasure goes out of our life - I have always noticed that before it happens - this leaving, this parting - when we think about it beforehand we are overwhelmed with sadness at the loss to come. ... the most unbearable sense of loss, the worst homesickness of all, so I have found, is this loss and sickness we feel beforehand, before we ever leave home.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Home, Sadness, Loss

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• If we imagine that God is somehow punishing us, then we will live our lives in desperation and in fear that we are somehow avoiding displeasing God. The difficulty with that is as many ideas about how to displease and how to please God, as there are hairs on your head.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Hair, Ideas, Desperation

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Something is amiss, deeply wrong, something is deeply wrong with the way we're living our lives collectively, with the way we are creating our collective experience on earth. And we are coming to the conclusion that the problem after all is not political, that the problem after all is not economic, that the problem after all cannot be solved with bombs or missiles or bullets, but that the problem in fact is spiritual, that the problem with the world today is as it has always been, a problem of our most basic beliefs. Without a doubt it`s a spiritual awakening and a spiritual revolution.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Spiritual, Creating, Political

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• By changing our mindset and habits, we can actually dramatically change the course of life, improve intelligence, productivity, improve the quality of our lives, and improve every single education and business outcome.

  Shawn Achor

  Quality, Outcomes, Habit

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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• Happiness is such an incredible advantage in our life. When the human brain is positive, our intelligence rises, we stop diverting resources to think about anxiety.

  Shawn Achor

  Thinking, Anxiety, Brain

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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