Universal Quotes - Page 10

• Suffering is universal. it’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

  John Green

  Christian, Buddhist, Alaska

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.68, Penguin

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• Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

  Annie Ernaux

  Writing, People, Purpose

  Annie Ernaux (2011). “Happening”, p.92, Seven Stories Press

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• To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends -- they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant.

  Beryl Markham

  Dog, Horse, Believe

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.122, Open Road Media

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• The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious.

  Wilfred Owen

  Night, Sight, Broken

  Wilfred Owen (1965). “The Collected poems of Wilfred Owen”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.

  Rachel Cohn

  Sports, Moving, Games

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.102, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?

  P. D. James

  Love You, Tragedy, Half

  P.D. James (2015). “P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries: Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes, Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and Death of an Expert Witness”, p.807, Simon and Schuster

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• A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble broken-hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behaviour.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Christian, Children, Humble

  Jonathan Edwards (1821). “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections: In Three Parts ...”, p.293

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• The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Lying, Mean, Men

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.103, Modern Library

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• The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process

  James A. Baldwin

  Artist, Creative, Suffering

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• I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Spiritual, Humility, Pride

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Such movies are always a danger...falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced...The theme is universal and encourages...unhealthy comparisons...why can't our lives be like that? It's a box left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.

  David Sedaris

  Falling In Love, Art, Epic

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• To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.

  Osamu Dazai

  Reality, Ninety Nine, Expectations

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• A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain

  Marcel Proust

  Rain, Fall, Light

  Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.102, Jester House Publishing

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• His universal compassion was due less to natural instinct, than to a profound conviction, a sum of thoughts that in the course of living had filtered through to his heart: for in the nature of man, as in rock, there may be channels hollowed by the dropping of water, and these can never be destroyed.

  Victor Hugo

  Heart, Men, Compassion

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.

  Charles Dickens

  Mother, Children, Home

  Charles Dickens (2012). “Four Novels: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Hard Times”, p.447, Graphic Arts Books

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• it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.

  Franz Kafka

  Lying, Principles, Melancholy

  Franz Kafka (1983). “The Penguin complete novels of Franz Kafka”

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• Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.

  James Lee Burke

  Country, Men, Greatest Fear

  James Lee Burke (2011). “The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel”, p.540, Simon and Schuster

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• Those who rise first are morally superior. It's a universal law.

  O.R. Melling

  Law, Firsts, Superiors

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• If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Live Life, Ambition

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.31, Heron Dance Press

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• Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.

  Rohinton Mistry

  Loss, Essence, Snakes

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• Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.

  Alexander Pope

  Fall, Flames, Hands

  'The Dunciad' (1742) bk. 4, l. 653

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• I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Thinking, People

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• Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Stupid, Execution, Pity

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• Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it.

  Paul Brunton

  Perseverance, Healing, Heart

  Paul Brunton (1984). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton”, Larson Publication

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• Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics: —missionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe. —contemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation. —universal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.

  Mother Teresa

  Heart, Water, Grace

  Mother Teresa (1985). “Mother Teresa: Contemplative in the Heart of the World”

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