Pien Budding > Pien's Quotes

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
― Dr. Seuss

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
― Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”
― Mary Oliver

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
― Rumi

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Love is no destruction, but rather instruction, nourishment and sustenance for those who trust in it, for Love is repletion and the abyss and the fullness of the sea.”
― Marguerite Porete, Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls

“Love: Such a Soul, says Love, swims in the sea of joy, that is in the sea of delights flowing and streaming from the Divinity, and she feels no joy, for she herself is joy, and so she swims and flows in joy without feeling any joy, for she dwells in joy and joy dwells in her; for through the power of joy she is herself joy, which has changed her into itself.
Now they have one common will, like fire and flame, the will of the lover and that of the beloved, for love has changed this Soul into itself.

The Soul: Ah, sweetest, pure, divine Love, says this Soul, how sweet is this changing by which I am changed into the thing that i love better than I love myself! And I am so changed that i have therein lost my name for the sake of loving, I who can love so little; and I am changed into that which I love more than myself, that is, into Love, for I love nothing but Love.”
― Marguerite Porete, Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls

“Imagine two astronauts go to the moon, and while they’re there, there’s an accident and their ship can’t take them back to Earth. They have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you were to ask them at that moment, “What is your deepest wish?” they would answer, “To be back home walking on our beautiful planet Earth.” That would be enough for them; they wouldn’t want anything else. They wouldn’t think of being the head of a large corporation, a famous celebrity, or the president of the United States. They wouldn’t want anything but to be back here—walking on Earth, enjoying every step, listening to the sounds of nature, or holding the hand of their beloved while contemplating the moon at night. We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from dying on the moon. We are on Earth now, and we need to enjoy walking on this precious, beautiful planet. Zen Master Linji said, “The miracle is not to walk on water or fire. The miracle is to walk on the earth.” I cherish that teaching. I enjoy just walking, even in busy places like airports and railway stations. Walking like that, with each step caressing our Mother Earth, we can inspire other people to do the same. We can enjoy every minute of our lives.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

“The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“Bhikkhus, the teaching is merely a vehicle to describe the truth. Don’t mistake it for the truth itself. A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon. The teaching is like a raft that carries you to the other shore. The raft is needed, but the raft is not the other shore. An intelligent person would not carry the raft around on his head after making it across to the other shore. Bhikkhus, my teaching is the raft which can help you cross to the other shore beyond birth and death. Use the raft to cross to the other shore, but don’t hang onto it as your property. Do not
become caught in the teaching. You must be able to let it go.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality”
― victor frankl

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire.

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,"The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

“Anxiety,’ Kierkegaard wrote, in the middle of the nineteenth century, ‘is the dizziness of freedom.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Anxiety is a response to the awareness of one’s freedom, of one’s power to gaze into the yawning abyss of possibilities, and through an act of choice actualize one of those potentialities. It is a response to the recognition that one is free to choose from possibilities, and therefore ultimately responsible for oneself and one’s future. This awesome sense of freedom and responsibility is apprehended as simultaneously attractive and repulsive, an ambivalence Kierkegaard called “dread”.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Keep walking. If I look back I am lost.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”
― Michael Jackson

“People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.”
― Michael Jackson

“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.

I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become thevictor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal
dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing...and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance.”
― Michael Jackson