Catherine > Catherine's Quotes

“...бывают в жизни человека редкие моменты, когда возникает в душе жажда откровенности и речей, хотя после часто и стыдно бывает, особенно когда догадаетесь, что вас слушали без сочувствия. "Эк меня разносило! - думается увлёкшемуся человеку. - Опять, опять не утерпел!.. Зачем было высказываться до таких подробностей? К чему эти вопли, которые не нормальное же моё состояние? Разве первый раз ощутил я прилив этих чувств? Надобно смотреть на других: все спокойны, не увидишь одушевлённого лица - все, как доска, без выражения, не услышишь сильно поднятой ноты в голосе. Мало ли что вчера было больно, нестерпимо, кричать хотелось, а сегодня больно от неумеренного крику". Но напрасно человек заклинает горячее слово и откровенную беседу; когда созреет вопль душевный, радостный или печальный, опять явится откровенность, потому что это закон физилогический и психический, это закон природы. Есть какой-то хмель в откровенности; она одуряет и увлекает; и как рад человек, когда найдёт другого человека и когда он, оглядевшись, уверится, что над его мыслью никто не стоит, запрёт двери - и тут-то польются речи рекой, и тогда именно можно заговориться до охмеления. Поговорить хоть, если нельзя делать; хоть потихоньку, если нельзя вслух. Кто не испытывал этого блаженства речи?..

- Н.Г. Помяловский "Мещанское счастье”
― Н.Г. Помяловский, Повести о любви. Сборник в двух томах. Том первый

“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.”
― Sean O'Casey

“The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.”
― Jules Renard

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.”
― Blaise Pascal

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“We never know what a day will bring us, but one thing we do know is that every morning we can wake up, smile and hope for the best. SMILE IT'S A NEW DAY”
― Ellen K. Wookey

“Just one smile
Immensely increases the beauty
Of the universe.”
― Sri Chinmoy, Sri Chinmoy's Heart Garden: A Book of Aphorisms for Joy and Inspiration

“I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams.”
― Dara Torres, Age Is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life

“Don't let your plans or goals become more important than yourself, or the ones you care about! :)”
― José N. Harris, MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love

“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.

In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news.”
― Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“What a lovely thing a rose is!"

He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.

"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
― Benjamin Spock

“I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.

Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”
― James Clavell, Shōgun

“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.

If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
― Carl Sagan

“The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind
about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
― John Keats

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“Faith doesn't get you around problems in life and relationships, it gets you through it.”
― Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”
― Bob Marley

“How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
― Ellen Bass

“You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“No matter how many people believe or don’t believe in you, you must be
the ultimate believer in yourself!”
― pablo