The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.
– Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
– Milan Kundera
Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.
– Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
– Albert Camus
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
– Anais Nin
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
– Mark Twain
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
– Robert Frost
The best way forward is always through.
– Robert Frost
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
– Henry David Thoreau
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
– Buddha
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
– Aristotle
Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
– Lord Byron
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
– Aristotle
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
– Lord Byron
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
– Aristotle
The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly – by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
– Aristotle
Life always takes us by surprise doesn’t it? Just when you think you have it all managed or just when you’re about to give up, things change.
Change… the only other certainty about life besides death. The way the future is perceived is always changing too. The future looks to be like this now and then years down the road, when I look at the future beyond, it’s different than what my younger self would have envisioned.
Looking back to when I started this blog and where I am now, my perspective on so many things have changed. I have slowed down, not because I’m old or unable, but because I have finally understood how to stop and smell the roses. It’s not just about taking a sniff and then moving on, as my younger self thought.
Over the years, I have seen that the concept of coincidence is really just a superstition of sorts. Everything that is experienced in life teaches you something. Whether you learn the lesson right then, or it’s a lesson that falls into place down the road – it’s a lesson whether you know it or not.
Hindsight brings much value to decisions yet to be made. But even the knowledge that hindsight uncovers a week after an event, a year after, or a decade after varies… such are the beautiful intricacies of life, don’t you think?
~s.k.s.s.
Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
– Helen Keller
