Friday, June 06, 2025

Quotes - Forty-Three

Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together.  As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different.  You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime.  You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive.  I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.

--Oscar Auliq-Ice

Live a good life.  If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.  If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.  If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

--Marcus Aurelius

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask the following question, “What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

--Marcus Aurelius

I don’t have an issue with what you do in the church, but I’m going to be up in your face if you’re going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they’ve got to teach what you’re teaching in your Sunday school.  Because that’s when we’re going to fight.

--Neil deGrasse Tyson

Love really just is sharing blankets, driving together in silence, “This song made me think of you”, “I made them for you,” having the most fun just talking, cold hands warm hearts, “I got home safe,” “You said you needed one, so I found one for you”.

--dreamslikehoney

May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears, and, above all, may silence make you strong.

- Chief Dan George

Reading forces you to be quiet in a world that no longer makes a place for that.

--John Green

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

--Jack Kornfield

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, or considering happiness as something rather stupid.  Only pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting.  This is treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Some people tremble at the idea of being alone.  I don’t understand.  I love my solitude.  my energy is never leeched; my feelings are never hurt.  I treat myself well, I entertain myself, but it’s peaceful.

--Sylvester McNutt

I just think goodness is more interesting.  Evil is constant.  You can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five.  But you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good -- and that’s complicated.

--Tony Morrison

Edgar Allan Poe is awesome because he wrote about relatable subjects like grief, loss, unrequited love, burying enemies alive in your cellar, and being terrified of a bird.

--Amy Dodd Pilkington

Science… is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.

-Sir Terry Pratchett

You want fantasy?  Here’s one… There’s this species that lives on a planet a few miles above molten rock and a few miles below a vacuum that’d suck the air right out of them.  They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface.  As far as they can tell, there’s nowhere else in the universe where they could stay alive for ten seconds.  And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time?  They call it real life.  In a universe where it is known that whole galaxies can explode, they think there’s things like ‘natural justice’ and ‘destiny’.  Some of them even believe in democracy… I’m a fantasy writer, and even I find it all a bit hard to believe.

--Terry Pratchett

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured us.  It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken.  Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

--Socrates

Let them judge you.  Let them misunderstand you.  Let them gossip about you.  Their opinions aren't your problem.  You stay kind, committed to love, and free in your authenticity.  No matter what they do or say, don't you dare doubt your worth or the beauty of your truth.  Just keep on shining like you do.

--Scott Stabile

Grow tired of you?  Never.  No chance in hell.  We could share a hundred lifetimes and in our last few remaining moments, I would find something new to adore about you.

--Beau Taplin

I have come to the conclusion that buying books and reading books are two completely different hobbies.

--@theartsyreader1

But who prays for Satan?  Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

--Mark Twain

Strange, a God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none Himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon Himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship Him!

--Mark Twain

Once you lose access to me, don’t expect the same me I gave you in the beginning.  Expect the version of me you deserve.  From the energy you created.

--Unknown

You may believe that living life to the fullest is seeing every country in the world and quitting your job on a whim and falling recklessly in love, but it’s really just knowing how to be where your feet are.  It’s learning how to take care of yourself, how to make a home within your own skin.  It’s learning how to build a simple life you are proud of.  A life most fully lived is not always composed of the things that rock you awake, but those that slowly assure you it’s okay to slow down.  That you don’t always have to prove yourself.  That you don’t need to fight forever, or constantly want more.  That it’s okay for things to be just as they are.  Little by little, you will begin to see that life can only grow outward in proportion to how stable it is inward-that if the joy is not in the little things first, the big things won’t fully find us.

--Brianna Wiest

 

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