Our Lives Quotes - Page 6

• It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Art, Mean, Interesting

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.222, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• If our friends' idealizations of us need the corrective of our own experience, it may be true also that our own sordid view of our lives needs the corrective of our friends' idealizations.

  Oscar W. Firkins

  Views, Needs, May

  Oscar W. Firkins (1934). “Memoirs and Letters”, p.45, U of Minnesota Press

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• What the Indians are saying is that they are recognizing the right of wilderness to be wilderness. Wilderness is not an extension of human need or of human justification. It is itself and it is inviolate, itself. This does not mean that, therefore, we become separated from it, because we don't. We stay connected if, once in our lives, we learn exactly what that connection is between our heart, our womb, our mind, and wilderness. And when each of us has her wilderness within her, we can be together in a balanced kind of way. The forever, we have that within us.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Nature, Heart, Mean

  Paula Gunn Allen (1998). “Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-busting Border-crossing Loose Canons”, Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press

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• The island of the tonal, the way we see life, is there so we can get through our life. It was never intended to become a dictator that would usurp all other views of the world and banish them.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Islands, Views

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• Unlike the transient days of our lives that constantly come and go, nirvana has always been, is now, and always will be.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Suffering, Comes And Goes

  Frederick Lenz (1995). “Surfing the Himalayas: A Spiritual Adventure”, St Martins Press

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• Christ is the sun, and all the watches of our lives should be set by the dial of his motion.

  Thomas Brooks

  Watches, Sun, Christ

  Thomas Brooks (1820). “The privie key of heaven; or Twenty arguments for closet-prayer, in a select discourse”, p.13

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• Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.

  Lauren Oliver

  Growing Up, Path, Adults

  Lauren Oliver (2014). “Delirium: The Complete Collection: Delirium, Hana, Pandemonium, Annabel, Raven, Requiem”, p.48, Harper Collins

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• Nous ne pouvons arracher une seule page de notre vie, mais nous pouvons jeter le livre au feu. We cannot tear out a single page from our life, but we can throw the entire book in the fire.

  Sydney Samuelson

  Book, Fire, Tears

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• It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives.

  Frank Kermode

  Trying, Way, Helping

  Frank Kermode (2000). “The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue”, p.9, Oxford University Press

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• Discontents are sometimes the better part of our life. I know not well which is the most useful; joy I may choose for pleasure, but adversities are the best for profit; and sometimes those do so far help me, as I should, without them, want much of the joy I have.

  Owen Feltham

  Adversity, Joy, May

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• Our life is so short that every time I see my children, I enjoy them as much as I can. Whenever I can, I enjoy my beloved, my family, my friends, my apprentices. But mainly I enjoy myself, because I am with myself all the time. Why should I spend my precious time with myself judging myself, rejecting myself, creating guilt and shame? Why should I push myself to be angry or jealous? If I don't feel good emotionally, I find out what is causing it and I fix it. Then I can recover my happiness and keep going with my story.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Family, Happiness, Friends

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• No one is perfect. Even the most confident people have insecurities. At some point in of our lives, we may feel we lack something. That is reality. We must try to live as per our capability.

  Anil Sinha

  Reality, People, Perfect

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• Happiness comes from our response to the conditions of our lives.

  Chris Prentiss

  Happiness, Response, Conditions

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• The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.

  Honore de Balzac

  Summer, Spring, Flower

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• We must make our lives as we sew, stitch by stitch.

  Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

  Stitches

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• The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, our earth, to be like a school, and our life, the classrooms. Sometimes on our planet life school, the lessons often come dressed up as detours and road blocks and sometimes as full blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Block, School, Secret

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• For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Girl, Gossip, History

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• Too much of our lives corresponds to the 'lost-wallet' theory of life. You lose something, spend a long time finding it, and then feel grateful to be back where you started.

  Gloria Steinem

  Grateful, Long, Too Much

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.265, Open Road Media

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• Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness. When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

  Helen Keller

  Miracle, Faces, Goodness

  Helen Keller (1920). “Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision”

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• Money ... it's both the most complicated and the most passionate relationship in our lives.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Money, Passionate, Complicated

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (2011). “Peace and Plenty: Finding your path to financial security”, p.68, Random House

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• How! leap into the pit our life to save?
  To save our life leap all into the grave.

  William Cowper

  Suicide, Pits, Graves

  William Cowper (1820). “Poems: In two volumes. Embellished with engravings, and a sketch of his life”, p.339

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• When Mother died I was both freed and abandoned, as are we all at this profound juncture in our lives.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Mother, Profound, Abandoned

  Rita Mae Brown (2009). “Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser”, p.384, Bantam

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• If we are unhappy without a relationship, we'll probably be unhappy with one as well. A relationship doesn't begin our life; a relationship doesn't become our life. A relationship is a continuation of life.

  Melody Beattie

  Continuation Of Life, Unhappy, Wells

  Melody Beattie (2013). “Melody Beattie 3 Title Bundle: Author of Codependent No More and Three Other Best Sellers: A collection of three Melody Beattie best sellers”, p.118, Hazelden Publishing

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• If we are waiting for guaranteed courses of action, we may spend much of our life waiting.

  Melody Beattie

  Waiting, May, Action

  Melody Beattie (1990). “The Language of Letting Go”, p.135, Hazelden Publishing

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• 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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