I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world.
I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women, or to enter ordinary relationships.
I want ecstasy.
I am a neurotic -- in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.
- Anais Nin
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
- William Shakespeare
A man is what he is, not what he used to be.
- Yiddish proverb
Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
- Walter Anderson
Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
- e.e. cummings
I must live my arguement.
- Albert Schweitzer
The nearer the dawn the darker the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A human being must either climb up or climb down.
- Talmud: Erubin, 21a
Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of
the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.
- Kahlil Gibran
The marksman hitteth the mark partly by pulling, partly by letting go.
- Egyptian proverb
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
- Kahlil Gibran
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
-Janis Joplin
It is better to see God in everything than to try and figure it out.
- Neem Karoli Baba
God is closest to those with broken hearts.
- Jewish proverb
Let the past drift away with the water.
- Japanese Proverb
Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
- Buddha
Indeed,
I am neither bound nor free.
An end to illusion!
It is all groundless.
For the whole of creation,
Though it rests in me,
Is without foundation.
- Ashtavakra Gita 2:18
Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, "Miracle of Mindfulness"
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
- Dalai Lama
Every moment of one's existence, one is growing into more or shrinking into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."
- Norman Mailer
If given with love, a handful is sufficient.
- Telugu proverb
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere."
- La Rochefoucauld
First a person should put his house together, then his town, then the world.
- Rabbi Israel Salanter
"...I don't want to have to, but I will ~ if that's what I'm supposed to do..."
unaccountably we are alone
forever alone
and it was meant to be
that way.
it was never meant
to be any other way -
and when the death struggle
begins
the last thing I wish to see
is
a ring of human faces
hovering over me -
better just my old friends,
the walls of myself,
let there only be them there.
I have been alone but seldom
lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well
of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight
sitting
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything
in between.
peace of mind and heart
arrive
when we accept what
is;
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days,
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.
cry not for me.
grieve not for me.
read
what I've written
then
forget it
all.
drink from the well
of your self
and begin
again
~C.Bukowski
