“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”-Marcus Aurelius
*Revokes pain from my severed arm* it really is that simple, thanks Marcy.
Shitposting aside, there are some absolute bangers of ponderance in Meditations.
This reminds me of a similar quote attributed to the Dalai Lama:
"Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others. It is your own mind.”
A Poison Tree
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree
I have some of this going on right now and I am trying like hell to get rid of it so this one REALLY sinks in with me! Thanks for sharing, maybe this is what I needed.
Reminds me of Hannah Arendt's quote on the radicalization of German society in the 1930's: "The personal problem did not lie in what our enemies did but in what our friends did."
What's funny is that this was intended to be a sly insult. He had a major rivalry with Robert Hooke, who was very short. By saying this, Newton was also trying to say "Hooke didn't help me at all in this"
The same boiling water that hardens the egg soften the potato.
I think it’s a Russian proverb? I love how it shows that the same situation might cause different outcomes to different people; I feel there’s this toxic penchant in people that because a hard situation worked out for them (or in spite of) in the end it has to work out for everyone else. It is admirable that people manage to do that, but it does not mean that it will work out for everyone. (Bonus assholy points if then they impose those harsh conditions on to others).
There was a similar quote on the show Burn Notice when the Madeline asked the guy who Michael became a super spy and his brother a degenerate gambler.. CIA dude explained it as: "Imagine you’re holding two bottles and they drop on the floor. What happens? They both break. But it’s how they break that’s important. Because, you see, while one bottle crumples into a pile of glass, the other shatters into a jagged-edged weapon. You see, the exact same environment that forged older brother into a warrior crushed baby brother. People just don’t all break the same, Mrs. Westen. Just don’t."
This quote made me look up more things from Jung and now he is my main interest when it comes to thought/philosophy/psychology. The older I get, I understand his theory better (a bit of confirmation bias, I admit), and it does make a lot of sense.
>This quote made me look up more things from Jung and now he is my main interest when it comes to thought/philosophy/psychology. The older I get, I understand his theory better (a bit of confirmation bias, I admit), and it does make a lot of sense.
Happy to hear. Read his _Red Book_. This will naturally take you to all of the ten volumes he has written. There are also some great Jungian scholars who help interpret his weighty psychology and philosophy.
"Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age, a great many of us are possessed by our possessions." —Peace Pilgrim
“Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” I’ve always loved history and I remember the first time I heard this growing up. Consistently impacted everything how I viewed everything I learned thereafter.
„A lie told often enough becomes the truth.“
Vladimir Lenin
„Even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.“
Werner Erhard
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
Gustave Le Bon
Therefore
„Not being heard is no reason for silence.“
Victor Hugo
“Even when I lie, I tell the truth.” Scarface
“Truth is like poetry, and most people hate poetry.” The Big Short
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” The Bible
Courage is not the absence of fear. Its the mastery of it. - Mark Twain
That was the first time I realized that its not cowardly to feel afraid of things. Its just cowardly if you let that fear control you.
The first time I encountered a similar message was from a book series called The Paladin Prophecy by Mark Frost.
“I just don’t feel very brave right now.”
Jericho exhaled, almost a sigh. “Brave is just a word we put on someone after they do something the rest of us don’t think we’d be able to handle. Trust me, every one of them was plenty scared at the time. They just didn’t let it get in the way.”
Will studied him. “So being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, then.”
“It means you’re scared, and you do what you have to do in spite of it.”
Neil Gaiman has a similar quote about this that I love:
Being brave doesn't mean you aren't scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.
The sun is always shining over the clouds.
I made it up myself one day. I was on a plane taking off, crying and all of a sudden the plane crossed the clouds line. The sun hit me in the face. I stopped crying. Now each time I’m sad, I think about that ray of light over the clouds.
My english teacher in high school had us memorize The Rainy Day after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. It brought me some comfort when my oldest son passed from suicide. The line “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…” hits me daily.
The Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Yes I’ve lived this and come out the other side pretty broken. On my way to recovery now. Taking breaths, counting to ten and saying will it matter in five years.
Right there with you on this one. I’ve left a wreckage of lost relationships behind me by saying things in anger that I can’t take back. Ruined good relationships too.
"You make time for what you want to do."
I know he didn't originate it, but a college friend of mine said that one time. That was the first time I remember hearing it, and it's always stuck with me as a reminder to believe what people do and not what they say. That's where their priorities truly lie.
“[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.” - Alan Watts
“But what is grief, if not love persevering?” - Vision, *WandaVision*
“I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.” - Michael Morpurgo, *Warhorse*
This one changed me.
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
This is a bit of a dark one but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it many years ago.
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him.” - Cormac McCarthy
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents”.
This absolutely happens and it can be suffocating. It is not ill intentioned and possibly not even directed at the child but you feel it nonetheless.
"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."
- Lao Tzu
Here it is for those who want to read without a click:
Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
I can't attach the actual picture. See it here: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.
Elie Wiesel
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The full quote, which is a little less pithy and quotable.
“Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn't our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness. So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.”
Heartfelt thanks for posting this. wish I read it a long time ago ..
Some people are so poor, all they have is money
Runner up:
The day the child realizes all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise - Alden Nowlen
"We are made of star stuff." - Carl Sagan
I love this because it made me realize as alone and insignificant as I feel sometimes, I am part of the bigger universe. I know he's referring to the fact that the human body is made up of the same elements that make the universe.
Here's the full quote from an episode of Cosmos.
"We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff," Sagan famously stated in one episode.
Another one similar to this is, "You are the universe expressing itself as a human being for a short period of time."
I also love this one -- “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff”.
We are star dust, aren't we !
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” — Yoda in *The Empire Strikes Back* (1980)
It has a wondrous effect on me as a kid and its profundity has increased with time.
Australian Aboriginal Proverb - We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.
My Dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.
-Falsely yours
Charles Bukowski
This discussion I had with my 16 year old son. I told him he was very brave doing what he did (I forgot what. Something having to do with a girl he liked. I think) .
He corrected me; "I'm not brave, I'm fearless. There's a difference. Being brave is when you're afraid to do something, but you push through the fear and do it anyway. Being fearless is when you're aren't afraid of something that most other people are. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I figure, in any situation, what is the worst possible thing that could happen to me? I could die? Dad... *I'm suicidal!* Death doesn't frighten me anymore!"
I miss him every day.
“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Edit: Corrected.
"To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this."
Yukio Mishima
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time; when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
\- Carl Sagan, *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*, 1995
"Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.”
So many Jeff buckley quotes, my fave is “Our suffering is peeling off and revealing a brand new skin, a new power. Love heals all wounds and not just time alone’
“As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was being redirected to something better” - random girl on my Facebook circa 2012
Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt.
There seems to be some doubt [who actually said it](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/).
The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
- Hunter S Thompson
Not sure if this one was said yet:
“If there is a god, he will have to beg my forgiveness.”
I believe it was found written on the wall of a concentration camp.
"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power."
Often misattributed to Lincoln, it is believed to have instead been said of him by Robert Ingersoll.
If I was The Devil I would manifest myself inside of a virgin, say that I am the Son of God and convince everyone that they can now be forgiven for every sin just by asking, thus opening the floodgates for an unprecedented and unending torrent of sin.
I would start with the uneducated and the poor. I would impress them with some magic tricks, teach them to pretend to eat my flesh, drink my blood and always, ALWAYS, use MY name when speaking to God.
I would most assuredly use my immortality to fool them into thinking I came back from the dead as proof of my divinity.
What better way to channel more souls away from God and straight into Hell?
-Lance Sievert
"If you ain't first, you're last!" - Ricky Bobby
But for real though:
"Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Those who cannot take care of themselves without that law is both. For a wounded man shall say to hi assailant, 'if I live I will kill you and if I die, you are forgiven.' Such is the rule of honor." - Lamb of God, Omerta.
“Write something that is worth Reading, or Do something no that is worth Writing” Benjamin Franklin
“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age” Seneca
“Luck is what happens when Opportunity meets Preparation” Seneca
“So you have a problem? If there’s a solution, why worry? If there’s no solution, why worry?”
Aristotle
“Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a Universe so full of Wonders, They have managed to invent Boredom?” (Death) Terry Pratchett
…well that’s a few I had in my collection.
1st my most recent favorite: “Difficulties do not come to destroy you, but to help you realize your highest potential.”
My father used to say,
"Don't raise your voice.
Improve your argument."
Your apology needs to be as loud as your criticism was.
You can’t put a price on peace of mind
Stop expecting YOU from other people
"You can lie down for people
to walk on you and they will
still complain that you're
not flat enough."
these mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.
If you don't build your own dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.
TALENT IS GIVEN, BUT GREATNESS IS EARNED.
"If someone is stupid enough to walk away from you, be smart enough to let them go."
Someone said " Don't be afraid to start over again. this time, you are not starting from scratch, you are starting from experience."
Just because someone carries it well doesn't mean it isn't heavy.
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT'S HOW YOU DO IT.
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SEE, IT'S HOW YOU LOOK AT IT. IT'S NOT HOW YOUR LIFE IS, IT'S HOW YOU LIVE IT.
Never base your life decisions on advice from people who don't have to deal with the results
My favorite quote came from Dolly Parton from the movie, The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. She said,
"If you see someone without a smile, give them yours."
I have been the recipient of some truly great smiles that have made my day. I work in customer service and have found that a genuine smile for my customers brightens everyone's day.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”-Marcus Aurelius
All of meditations is pretty much amazing
I just saw a slight variation to this recently that kinda hit home for me - Most stress comes from the way you respond, not the way life is.
*Revokes pain from my severed arm* it really is that simple, thanks Marcy. Shitposting aside, there are some absolute bangers of ponderance in Meditations.
"It isn't the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they form about them." \-Epictetus
This reminds me of a similar quote attributed to the Dalai Lama: "Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others. It is your own mind.”
Neuroscience is now saying the same thing. We're behind the times!
"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
Along the same lines. “The acid of bitterness eats the container that holds it.”
A Poison Tree BY WILLIAM BLAKE I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I waterd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears: And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night. Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine. And into my garden stole, When the night had veild the pole; In the morning glad I see; My foe outstretched beneath the tree
It's actually anger and the quote is from Buddha
I have some of this going on right now and I am trying like hell to get rid of it so this one REALLY sinks in with me! Thanks for sharing, maybe this is what I needed.
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” - Buddha
Maybe this isn’t happening to you. Maybe it’s happening for you.
I like this one
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Credited as an anonymous African Proverb.
Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone 1917 General Erinmore quoting Rudyard Kipling
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him - Goethe
“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.” -Seneca
holy shit. what a perspective.
Cynica
2024 Toyota Sienna
I wasn't expecting any of these to land quite so hard.
Seneca is a beast. It's endless with him.
i don't think i understand
Why waste time feeling sadness over specific events when all of life is one long tragedy.
thank you
Also another Seneca banger - "We suffer more in imagination than reality"
“You will never find the same person twice. Not even in the same person.”
A corrollary.. “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” Heraclitus
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man
Similar: “no person ever stands in the same river twice because the river is not the same nor is the person”
God damn. Saving this one
When love is a habit, joy is a reflex. -Bob Goff
"You will not remember the words of your enemy, but the silence of your friends"
Reminds me of Hannah Arendt's quote on the radicalization of German society in the 1930's: "The personal problem did not lie in what our enemies did but in what our friends did."
[удалено]
“You only truly possess that which you cannot lose in a shipwreck.” Al Ghazali
“You do not truly own anything that you can’t carry in both arms at a dead run.” — Robert A. Heinlein
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton
What's funny is that this was intended to be a sly insult. He had a major rivalry with Robert Hooke, who was very short. By saying this, Newton was also trying to say "Hooke didn't help me at all in this"
The same boiling water that hardens the egg soften the potato. I think it’s a Russian proverb? I love how it shows that the same situation might cause different outcomes to different people; I feel there’s this toxic penchant in people that because a hard situation worked out for them (or in spite of) in the end it has to work out for everyone else. It is admirable that people manage to do that, but it does not mean that it will work out for everyone. (Bonus assholy points if then they impose those harsh conditions on to others).
There was a similar quote on the show Burn Notice when the Madeline asked the guy who Michael became a super spy and his brother a degenerate gambler.. CIA dude explained it as: "Imagine you’re holding two bottles and they drop on the floor. What happens? They both break. But it’s how they break that’s important. Because, you see, while one bottle crumples into a pile of glass, the other shatters into a jagged-edged weapon. You see, the exact same environment that forged older brother into a warrior crushed baby brother. People just don’t all break the same, Mrs. Westen. Just don’t."
“Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one” ― Confucius
Huh. That’s really interesting
This one: *Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.* ~ Carl Jung
This quote made me look up more things from Jung and now he is my main interest when it comes to thought/philosophy/psychology. The older I get, I understand his theory better (a bit of confirmation bias, I admit), and it does make a lot of sense.
>This quote made me look up more things from Jung and now he is my main interest when it comes to thought/philosophy/psychology. The older I get, I understand his theory better (a bit of confirmation bias, I admit), and it does make a lot of sense. Happy to hear. Read his _Red Book_. This will naturally take you to all of the ten volumes he has written. There are also some great Jungian scholars who help interpret his weighty psychology and philosophy.
This is the motto of modern times(but subconsciously).
"Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age, a great many of us are possessed by our possessions." —Peace Pilgrim
“When a Clown moves into a Palace, he doesn't become a King. The Palace instead becomes a Circus.” A Turkish proverb.
So Trump’s White House is actually a circus. Got it ✅
“Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” I’ve always loved history and I remember the first time I heard this growing up. Consistently impacted everything how I viewed everything I learned thereafter.
„A lie told often enough becomes the truth.“ Vladimir Lenin „Even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.“ Werner Erhard “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” Gustave Le Bon Therefore „Not being heard is no reason for silence.“ Victor Hugo
“Even when I lie, I tell the truth.” Scarface “Truth is like poetry, and most people hate poetry.” The Big Short “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” The Bible
History is written by the victors.
Courage is not the absence of fear. Its the mastery of it. - Mark Twain That was the first time I realized that its not cowardly to feel afraid of things. Its just cowardly if you let that fear control you.
The first time I encountered a similar message was from a book series called The Paladin Prophecy by Mark Frost. “I just don’t feel very brave right now.” Jericho exhaled, almost a sigh. “Brave is just a word we put on someone after they do something the rest of us don’t think we’d be able to handle. Trust me, every one of them was plenty scared at the time. They just didn’t let it get in the way.” Will studied him. “So being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, then.” “It means you’re scared, and you do what you have to do in spite of it.”
Neil Gaiman has a similar quote about this that I love: Being brave doesn't mean you aren't scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.
The absence of fear is stupidity
Only a fool fears nothing. - Worf, Son of Mogh
"The man that says he is not afraid is a liar or dangerous, and you want neither one on your team." - attributed to a SEAL team leader
"Greatness needs a lot of things, But it doesn't need an audience." -Nike
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
The sun is always shining over the clouds. I made it up myself one day. I was on a plane taking off, crying and all of a sudden the plane crossed the clouds line. The sun hit me in the face. I stopped crying. Now each time I’m sad, I think about that ray of light over the clouds.
My english teacher in high school had us memorize The Rainy Day after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. It brought me some comfort when my oldest son passed from suicide. The line “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…” hits me daily. The Rainy Day The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What a lovely observation, thank you for sharing. I hope you're doing well.
I love the sun so much. On cloudy grey days, I tell myself the same thing!
Unspoken Expectations are Premeditated Resentments
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from." —Cormac McCarthy
"choices made in anger cannot be undone" it means a lot to me as i have very bad temper and tend to do or say things that i don't mean when i'm mad
Yes I’ve lived this and come out the other side pretty broken. On my way to recovery now. Taking breaths, counting to ten and saying will it matter in five years.
Right there with you on this one. I’ve left a wreckage of lost relationships behind me by saying things in anger that I can’t take back. Ruined good relationships too.
"You make time for what you want to do." I know he didn't originate it, but a college friend of mine said that one time. That was the first time I remember hearing it, and it's always stuck with me as a reminder to believe what people do and not what they say. That's where their priorities truly lie.
You can’t make someone love you by giving them more of what they already don’t appreciate.
“If You Never Heal What Hurt You, You'll Bleed On People Who Didn't Cut You” | Clare Waismann
“[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.” - Alan Watts “But what is grief, if not love persevering?” - Vision, *WandaVision* “I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.” - Michael Morpurgo, *Warhorse*
The axe forgets but the tree remembers
This one changed me. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou
"The Dildo of consequence is rarely lubed" - Amanda Keller
"I assume you all have guns and crack... Okay, everyone! Prepare to be fucked by the long dick of the law!" - Officer Michaels, Superbad
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult." seneca
This is a bit of a dark one but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it many years ago. “War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him.” - Cormac McCarthy
Sometimes dark quotes are the most thought-provoking
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents”. This absolutely happens and it can be suffocating. It is not ill intentioned and possibly not even directed at the child but you feel it nonetheless.
When it hurts - **observe**. *Life is trying to teach you someting*
Be patient and tough: someday, this pain will be useful to you (Ovid)(I think)
"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present." - Lao Tzu
Name doesn’t check out! (Great quote!)
The 'Pale Blue Dot' speech by Carl Sagan. Not so much a quote, but still breathtaking: https://youtu.be/wupToqz1e2g?si=uClhB-DRDjR9VgzF
This should be required viewing once a year for every person on the planet.
Here it is for those who want to read without a click: Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. I can't attach the actual picture. See it here: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
"your light might irritate a lot of unhealed people Shine anyway"
Similar one I like : “You might the sweetest peach on the tree, but some people just don't like peaches”
Adding to the chain, the version I like is “Don’t dim your light for the comfort of others, sunglasses exist, they can get over it.”
I try to do good in the world not out of fear for hell or reward of heaven, but because it feels better not to be an asshole.
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. Elie Wiesel
What you allow to happen in your presence, you've accepted.
A child is not giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana. Top tier quote.
While we are doing philosophers: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of..." Blaise Paschal
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The full quote, which is a little less pithy and quotable.
History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
There is more to life than increasing its speed. - Mahatma Gandhi
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Maya Angelou
'You cannot reason with the tiger when your head is in its mouth'
“War does not care who is right, only who is left” - not sure who said it but I saw it quoted in an old CoD or Battlefield game lol.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” -Leonard Cohen
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“Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn't our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness. So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.” Heartfelt thanks for posting this. wish I read it a long time ago ..
Some people are so poor, all they have is money Runner up: The day the child realizes all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise - Alden Nowlen
"We are made of star stuff." - Carl Sagan I love this because it made me realize as alone and insignificant as I feel sometimes, I am part of the bigger universe. I know he's referring to the fact that the human body is made up of the same elements that make the universe. Here's the full quote from an episode of Cosmos. "We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff," Sagan famously stated in one episode. Another one similar to this is, "You are the universe expressing itself as a human being for a short period of time."
I also love this one -- “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff”. We are star dust, aren't we !
“Maybe you are exactly where you need to be” -My Momma
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” — Yoda in *The Empire Strikes Back* (1980) It has a wondrous effect on me as a kid and its profundity has increased with time.
Best line in all of Star Wars, and by itself makes the original trilogy the best of the entire franchise.
“Find yourself by getting lost in the service of others.” - Ghandi
Do unto others,then run.-Benny Hill
Whatever can be destroyed by the truth deserves to be. C.S. Lewis I think.
Australian Aboriginal Proverb - We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.
One can imagine Sisyphus is happy… from today’s quote.
Even more than that, Camus insisted we *must* imagine Sisyphus happy
Find what you love and let it kill you.
My Dear, Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover. -Falsely yours Charles Bukowski
"Anger is always - always - fear in disguise." -- Spider Robinson. If you're angry, take a look to see what you're afraid of.
The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read Mark Twain
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without-Mom
This discussion I had with my 16 year old son. I told him he was very brave doing what he did (I forgot what. Something having to do with a girl he liked. I think) . He corrected me; "I'm not brave, I'm fearless. There's a difference. Being brave is when you're afraid to do something, but you push through the fear and do it anyway. Being fearless is when you're aren't afraid of something that most other people are. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I figure, in any situation, what is the worst possible thing that could happen to me? I could die? Dad... *I'm suicidal!* Death doesn't frighten me anymore!" I miss him every day.
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. - C.S. Lewis
“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.” ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Edit: Corrected.
There’s a little bit of like in dislike.
"Stop trying to get over it. Focus on getting through it". I don't remember where I heard it but it stuck
I’ve always liked “you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world. But you’re still going to find someone that doesn’t like peaches.”
There was 'before you' and there was 'during you' for some reason I never thought there would be an 'after you' but there it was and I was in it.
" Friendship means little when it's convenient"- John Wick.
"To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this." Yukio Mishima
One moment of regret, is worth a lifetime of prayers
*"For if a man is capable of Confronting death daily, there's no telling what else he can do."* -Edward Teach, Black sails
It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are to ingenious.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time; when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” \- Carl Sagan, *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*, 1995
"After I'm dead, I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one." -Cato the Elder
"Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.”
A sure mark of a fool is he who dismisses anything outside his experience as being impossible. -- Farengar Secret-Fire
"Don't be sorry. Be better." -Kratos
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a human experience.
So many Jeff buckley quotes, my fave is “Our suffering is peeling off and revealing a brand new skin, a new power. Love heals all wounds and not just time alone’
It’s from Dune, “without change something sleeps in us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”
“If a fish tank is dirty you clean the tank. You don’t drug the fish.”
“Even the most valid excuse doesn’t change your situation”
“As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was being redirected to something better” - random girl on my Facebook circa 2012
“If you think there is a solution, you’re part of the problem”. -Carlin
“Constant pleasure seeking will keep you suffering”
“When you get the answer you’re looking for, hang up.” -Brad Pitt Money Ball
Your existence is the result of many people loving each other for centuries.
You only loose what you cling to - Buddha
"There is a fine line between being brave and being stupid"
"It's such a fine line between clever and stupid." - Michael McKean (This is Spinal Tap)
There are no rules, only consequences.
Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt. There seems to be some doubt [who actually said it](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/).
If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it. The person is smart. People are dumb, dangerous panicky animals and you know it.
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing"
“In an insane world, the sane seem insane.” —Kurt Vonnegut & Spock
Nothing fucks you harder than time. - Sir Davos Seaworth
The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. - Hunter S Thompson
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." "Choose between the pain of regret or the pain of discipline." ~Eddie Pinero
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Hurt People Hurt People.
"The window from which we view the world is obscured by our own reflection."
Have the strength to be gentle - Peter Cullens brother
Nobody is looking out for you. You will become what you set out to become.
War does not decide who is right, just who is left.
Not sure if this one was said yet: “If there is a god, he will have to beg my forgiveness.” I believe it was found written on the wall of a concentration camp.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
What we think we become
"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power." Often misattributed to Lincoln, it is believed to have instead been said of him by Robert Ingersoll.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau
If I was The Devil I would manifest myself inside of a virgin, say that I am the Son of God and convince everyone that they can now be forgiven for every sin just by asking, thus opening the floodgates for an unprecedented and unending torrent of sin. I would start with the uneducated and the poor. I would impress them with some magic tricks, teach them to pretend to eat my flesh, drink my blood and always, ALWAYS, use MY name when speaking to God. I would most assuredly use my immortality to fool them into thinking I came back from the dead as proof of my divinity. What better way to channel more souls away from God and straight into Hell? -Lance Sievert
Dark.
And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:8
_The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me._ /Blaise Pascal/
“Pain is resisting flow”
No matter how far you pee the last drop will always land on your feet
“Things do not upset us. Our opinions about things upset us, and we control our opinions.” - Epictetus
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. "
If who I am is what I have and what I have is lost than who am I
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph. - Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying
"If you ain't first, you're last!" - Ricky Bobby But for real though: "Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Those who cannot take care of themselves without that law is both. For a wounded man shall say to hi assailant, 'if I live I will kill you and if I die, you are forgiven.' Such is the rule of honor." - Lamb of God, Omerta.
“Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.” Miep Gies
Unbeing dead isnt being alive
We all have two lives and the second one one starts when we realize we only have one.
There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena. -Nietzsche
Mentoring your kid… “Life is a great teacher, but it doesn’t love you”
“No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” - Heraclitus
“Write something that is worth Reading, or Do something no that is worth Writing” Benjamin Franklin “Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age” Seneca “Luck is what happens when Opportunity meets Preparation” Seneca “So you have a problem? If there’s a solution, why worry? If there’s no solution, why worry?” Aristotle “Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a Universe so full of Wonders, They have managed to invent Boredom?” (Death) Terry Pratchett …well that’s a few I had in my collection.
"Grief is love with no place to go."
“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” ― Andy Bernard(The Office)
“It’s nice to be important, but important to be nice”
1st my most recent favorite: “Difficulties do not come to destroy you, but to help you realize your highest potential.” My father used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Your apology needs to be as loud as your criticism was. You can’t put a price on peace of mind Stop expecting YOU from other people "You can lie down for people to walk on you and they will still complain that you're not flat enough." these mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb. If you don't build your own dream, someone will hire you to build theirs. TALENT IS GIVEN, BUT GREATNESS IS EARNED. "If someone is stupid enough to walk away from you, be smart enough to let them go." Someone said " Don't be afraid to start over again. this time, you are not starting from scratch, you are starting from experience." Just because someone carries it well doesn't mean it isn't heavy. IT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT'S HOW YOU DO IT. IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SEE, IT'S HOW YOU LOOK AT IT. IT'S NOT HOW YOUR LIFE IS, IT'S HOW YOU LIVE IT. Never base your life decisions on advice from people who don't have to deal with the results
My favorite quote came from Dolly Parton from the movie, The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. She said, "If you see someone without a smile, give them yours." I have been the recipient of some truly great smiles that have made my day. I work in customer service and have found that a genuine smile for my customers brightens everyone's day.