Vanessa > Vanessa's Quotes

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
― Alan Watts

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
― Alan Watts

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan Watts

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Michel de Montaigne wrote, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Robert Pantano, The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

“In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense.”
― Robert Pantano, The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.”
― Robert Pantano, The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

“Become what you are”:”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“Nobody knows my heart. It's hidden deep side my coat, my skin, my ribs. My heart was important for nine months inside my mother's belly, but once I left the belly, everyone stopped caring whether it beat enough times per hour. No one worries when it stops or begins to beat fast, telling me there must be something wrong.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“We find ourselves in loss and we are who we are – vulnerable beings, like stripped starling chicks that fall naked from their nests and hope they’ll be picked up again.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“It’s confusing, but grown-ups are often confusing because their heads work like a Tetris game and they have to arrange all their worries in the right”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Your worries are like water,' she often said. 'The moment one flows out, another floods in to fill the space.”
― Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much

“When realized I'd been right about him, I didn't feel vindicated, or smug, or pleased. I felt frightened, and disturbed by the familiarity. Worse than receiving rage was the ability to detect its remnants.”
― Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much

“I find that I enjoy the stability even more than the highs, certainly more than the lows.”
― Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much

“A significant moment deserves a considered prelude. Be ready.”
― Rob Walker, The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday

“My reading had now shifted strongly to existential thinkers in fiction as well as philosophy: such authors as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Beckett, Kundera, Hesse, Mutis, and Hamsun were not dealing primarily with matters of social class, courtship, sexual pursuit, mystery, or revenge: their subjects were far deeper, touching on the parameters of existence. They struggled to find meaning in a meaningless world, openly confronting inevitable death and unbridgeable isolation. I related to these mortal quandaries. I felt they were telling my story: and not only my story, but also the story of every patient who had ever consulted me. More and more I grasped that many of the issues my patients struggled with — aging, loss, death, major life choices such as what profession to pursue or whom to marry — were often more cogently addressed by novelists and philosophers than by members of my own field.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir

“Freedom is the ultimate concern most central to many existential thinkers. In my understanding, it refers to the idea that, since we all live in a universe without inherent design, we must be the authors of our own lives, choices, and actions. Such freedom generates so much anxiety that many of us embrace gods or dictators to remove the burden.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir

“Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than the sight of a woman violated by her own body!”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me--that is what I understand. And these two certainties--my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle--I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope which I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea