Seed of Wonder: The Quote Book

2011-12-19T00:09:00.001-08:00

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in."

- LEONARD COHEN

2011-08-11T01:59:00.001-07:00

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within."

- GEORGE ELIOT

2011-08-11T01:57:00.001-07:00

"A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us."

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

2011-08-11T01:55:00.001-07:00

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

- E.E. CUMMINGS

2011-08-11T01:48:00.000-07:00

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."

-MILAN KUNDERA,

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2011-08-11T01:43:00.001-07:00

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could."

-RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2011-08-11T01:41:00.001-07:00

"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."

-GOETHE

2011-08-11T01:39:00.000-07:00

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."

- SIGMUND FREUD

2011-05-17T15:56:00.001-07:00

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine."

-RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2011-04-06T09:55:00.001-07:00

"In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must got by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must got through the way in which you are not."

-T.S. ELIOT

2011-03-13T20:29:00.001-07:00

"A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life."

-FRANCES CORNFORD

2011-01-03T00:36:00.000-08:00

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship."

- LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

2010-12-19T23:36:00.001-08:00

"Hope is the dream of a soul awake."

-FRENCH PROVERB

2010-12-19T23:35:00.001-08:00

"Wine is bottled poetry."

-ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

2010-12-19T23:20:00.001-08:00

"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really."

-TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

2010-12-19T23:19:00.001-08:00

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."

-WASHINGTON IRVING

2010-12-19T23:09:00.001-08:00

"Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable."

- MAYA ANGELOU

2010-12-19T23:08:00.001-08:00

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it."

-ANAIS NIN

2010-12-19T23:06:00.001-08:00

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot."

- ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

2010-12-04T20:39:00.001-08:00

"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."

- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

2010-12-03T20:22:00.001-08:00

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

- T.S. ELIOT

2010-12-01T20:17:00.001-08:00

"somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

- e.e.cummings

2010-11-28T02:12:00.000-08:00

"Don't worry about getting to your point. I'm going to live forever."

-JACK DONAGHY,

30 Rock

2010-11-28T01:43:00.000-08:00

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

2010-11-28T01:42:00.000-08:00

“I've got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing's planted. I don't have a thing in the ground.”

- ARTHUR MILLER (Willy Loman),

Death of a Salesman

2010-11-28T01:39:00.001-08:00

"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."

-WILL ROGERS

2010-11-13T16:19:00.001-08:00

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

-GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

2010-11-08T09:16:00.001-08:00

‎"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."

- GEORGE MOORE

2010-11-07T21:14:00.001-08:00

"love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun more last than star"

- E.E. CUMMINGS

2010-10-26T22:24:00.001-07:00

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

— DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

2010-10-01T01:28:00.001-07:00

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

-MARK TWAIN

2010-09-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

"When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

-BUDDHIST PROVERB

2010-09-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

-WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

2010-09-07T19:19:00.001-07:00

"The way to know life is to love many things."

-VINCENT VAN GOGH

2010-08-22T15:43:00.001-07:00

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body."

-SHAKESPEARE

2010-08-22T15:16:00.003-07:00

"The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils."

-SHAKESPEARE

2010-08-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."

-SHAKESPEARE

2010-08-18T22:31:00.001-07:00

"In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
My sour wine is sweeter than your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon’s
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depths of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is borne on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins."

-PABLO NERUDA,
"In My Sky At Twilight"

2010-08-18T22:29:00.001-07:00

"Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal."

- VOLTAIRE

2010-08-18T22:28:00.001-07:00

"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

- ROBERT FROST

2010-08-18T22:27:00.001-07:00

"It is not down in any map; true places never are."

- HERMAN MELVILLE

2010-08-18T22:26:00.001-07:00

"You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose."

- GANDHI

2010-08-18T22:25:00.003-07:00

"If there is to be any peace, it will come through being, not having."

- HENRY MILLER

2010-08-18T22:25:00.001-07:00

"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."

- FRANCIS BACON

2010-08-18T22:24:00.003-07:00

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."

- LANGSTON HUGHES

2010-08-18T22:24:00.001-07:00

"A good night’s sleep, or a ten-minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine."

- RAY BRADBURY

2010-08-18T22:23:00.001-07:00

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."

- VICTOR HUGO

2010-08-18T22:17:00.001-07:00

"If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible."

- WINSTON CHURCHILL

2010-08-18T22:16:00.001-07:00

"It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’"

- A.A. MILNE,

Winnie the Pooh

2010-08-18T22:15:00.003-07:00

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."

- JOHN UPDIKE

2010-08-18T22:15:00.001-07:00

"The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow."

- H.G. WELLS

2010-08-18T22:14:00.003-07:00

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

- JONATHAN SWIFT

2010-08-18T22:14:00.001-07:00

"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

- HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

2010-08-18T22:12:00.001-07:00

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."

- VINCENT VAN GOGH

2010-08-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

"It ought to be lovely to be old, to be full of the peace that comes with experience and wrinkled ripe fulfillment."

- D.H. LAWRENCE

2010-08-18T22:10:00.001-07:00

"The main advantage of being famous is that when you bore people at dinner parties, they think it is their fault."

- HENRY KISSINGER

2010-08-18T22:07:00.001-07:00

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

- SALVADOR DALI

2010-08-18T22:06:00.001-07:00

"Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life."

- GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

2010-08-18T22:05:00.001-07:00

"Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes."

- ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

2010-08-18T22:03:00.003-07:00

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

- VICTOR HUGO

2010-08-18T22:02:00.001-07:00

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."

- VINCENT VAN GOGH

2010-08-18T21:52:00.001-07:00

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

- NICOLE KRAUSS,

The History of Love

2010-08-18T21:43:00.001-07:00

"It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquillity and occupation which give happiness."

- THOMAS JEFFERSON

2010-08-18T21:42:00.001-07:00

"That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed."

- NEIL GAIMAN

2010-08-18T21:41:00.003-07:00

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."

- PABLO NERUDA

2010-08-18T21:41:00.001-07:00

"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist, but the ability to start over."

- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

2010-08-18T21:40:00.003-07:00

"Women are made to be loved, not understood."

- OSCAR WILDE

2010-08-18T21:40:00.001-07:00

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

- C.S. LEWIS

2010-08-18T21:39:00.001-07:00

"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world."

- SIGMUND FREUD

2010-08-18T21:38:00.003-07:00

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

- OSCAR WILDE

2010-08-18T21:38:00.001-07:00

"Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul."

- PLATO

2010-08-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

"When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg."

- PABLO PICASSO

2010-08-18T21:36:00.001-07:00

"The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places."

- ERNEST HEMINGWAY

2010-08-18T21:35:00.003-07:00

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

- ROBERT HEINLEIN

2010-08-18T21:35:00.001-07:00

"Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind."

- MADELEINE L’ENGLE,

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

2010-08-18T21:34:00.003-07:00

"There is no harbor of peace from the changing waves of joy and despair."

- EURIPIDES

2010-08-18T21:34:00.001-07:00

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love."

- WASHINGTON IRVING

2010-08-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

"Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow."

- PABLO NERUDA

2010-08-18T21:29:00.001-07:00

"Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sink to rest."

- MARCUS AURELIUS

2010-08-18T21:28:00.001-07:00

"Freedom lies in being bold."

- ROBERT FROST

2010-08-18T21:24:00.003-07:00

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

- ALDOUS HUXLEY

2010-08-18T21:24:00.001-07:00

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

- LEO TOLSTOY

2010-08-18T21:23:00.003-07:00

"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence…"

- THOMAS WOLFE,

The Hills Beyond

2010-08-18T21:23:00.001-07:00

"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I’m in the wrong building."

- CHARLES SCHULZ

2010-08-18T21:21:00.001-07:00

"Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows."

- MARK TWAIN

2010-08-18T21:20:00.001-07:00

"The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow."

- SOCRATES

2010-08-18T21:16:00.001-07:00

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."

- VIRGINIA WOOLF

2010-08-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

"It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one's own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice."

-BUDDHA

2010-08-18T21:12:00.001-07:00

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

- LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

2010-08-18T21:11:00.001-07:00

"For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as love awakens them."

- PLATO

2010-08-18T21:10:00.001-07:00

"We’re always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it’s a little raw and nervy."

- E.L. DOCTOROW

2010-08-18T21:09:00.003-07:00

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

- NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

2010-08-18T21:09:00.001-07:00

"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

2010-08-18T21:08:00.003-07:00

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."

-MARK TWAIN

2010-08-18T21:03:00.001-07:00

"It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong."

- ABRAHAM LINCOLN

2010-08-18T21:02:00.001-07:00

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

- MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

2010-08-18T21:01:00.001-07:00

"Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them."

- FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY,

The Idiot

2010-08-18T21:00:00.003-07:00

"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."

- MAHATMA GANDHI

2010-08-18T21:00:00.001-07:00

"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance."

- RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2010-08-18T20:59:00.003-07:00

"Laughter is the language of the soul."

- PABLO NERUDA