Olivia Meserole > Olivia's Quotes

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#1

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

tags: love, questions

552 likes

#2

“Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged by Damnation

tags: answers, despair, inspiration, life, meaning, pain, purpose, questions, road, strength, survive

643 likes

#3

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

tags: experience, life, patience, questions

1144 likes

#4

“It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.

Ignorance is our deepest secret.

And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.

Here is a quick test:

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.

Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.

It will do both of you good.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

tags: adapt, adaptability, assimilate, assimilation, beliefs, change, discovery, ignorance, ignorant, incorporating, introspection, learning, mutability, new, new-thought, open, open-mind, open-minded, open-mindedness, ponder, question, questioning, questions, re-evaluating, receptive, rethink, rethinking, secret, think, thinking, wise

374 likes

#5

“Questions that will free you might have answers that will imprison you again.”
― Nema Al-Araby

tags: answers, freedom, questions

21 likes

#6

“Let’s start with this statistic: You are delicious. Be brave, my sweet. I know you can get lonely. I know you can crave companionship and sex and love so badly that it physically hurts. But I truly believe that the only way you can find out that there’s something better out there is to first believe there’s something better out there. What other choice is there?”
― Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You

tags: call, dating, dating-advice, guys, love, marriage, romance, truth

1068 likes

#7

“He doesn’t have to love your CD collection. He doesn’t have to love your shoes. But any good, mature guy better make an attempt to love your friends and family—especially when they’re great.”
― Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

tags: family, guys, men, relationships

395 likes

#8

“Lesson learned: Don’t ever put a guy up on a pedestal. It’s too easy for him to tip over and fall off.”
― Kate Madison, Spilled Perfume: A Memoir

tags: dating, guys, memoir, pedestal

9 likes

#9

“You’ve no idea the restraint I’ve created. A word, which in a past life, never held special meaning for me, flows now through the blood of my veins as if to remind me it was always there. Like you, always there. You said I was not strong. So I created strength to fight against these natural feelings which keep me tied to you. I drew a line in the sand so I would not step towards your door again. I have boundaries, strength and pride. What I do not have is you. And that is the only part I wanted. You’ve no idea the restraint I’ve created. You’ve no idea the bold wall I’ve built to keep me out of your compromising arms.”
― Jamie Weise

tags: jamie-weise, love, lovers-breakup, pain, passion, strength-through-adversity

65 likes

#10

“The strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell. It is pounded and struck repeatedly before it's plunged back into the molten fire. The fire gives it power and flexibility, and the blows give it STRENGTH. Those two thing make the metal pliable and able to withstand every battle it's called upon to fight.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, The Dark-Hunters, Vol. 1

tags: strength-through-adversity

60 likes

#11

“She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.”
― Laura Lippman, By a Spider's Thread

tags: bullshit, strength-through-adversity

55 likes

#12

“Have you ever played chess, Kitty?”
I eyed her. What did a board game have to do with this? “Not really.”
“You and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,” she said. “It’s a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak pieces—the pawns—are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play, I protect my pawns.”
“Why?” I said, not entirely sure where this conversation was going. “If they’re weak, then what’s the point?”
“They may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the time, they’ll be taken by the other side and held captive until the end of the game. But if you’re careful—if you keep your eyes open and pay attention to what your opponent is doing, if you protect your pawns and they reach the other side of the board, do you know what happens then?”
I shook my head, and she smiled.
“Your pawn becomes a queen.” She touched my cheek, her fingers cold as ice. “Because they kept moving forward and triumphed against impossible odds, they become the most powerful piece in the game. Never forget that, all right? Never forget the potential one solitary pawn has to change the entire game.”
― Aimee Carter, Pawn

tags: individuality, inspirational, strategy, strength-through-adversity

65 likes

#13

“Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

tags: sorrow, strength-through-adversity, tears

29 likes

#14

“The key is to be stronger than your situation, not run away from it.”
― Joshlyn Wallace

tags: inspirational, strength-through-adversity

9 likes

#15

“Inventory:

"Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

tags: champagne, contentment, curiosity, doubt, envy, foes, friends, hope, idleness, inventory, knowledge, laughter, life, love, sorrow, sufficienty, superfluity, unattainable, values, wisdom

1174 likes

#16

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

tags: doubt, fear, terror, wonder

874 likes

#17

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers--perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

tags: doubt

401 likes

#18

“For so many years I lived in constant terror of myself. Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree. I had been shackled, a prisoner in my own mind.

But finally, finally, I have learned to break free.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

tags: doubt, insperational, juliette-ferrars

503 likes

#19

“Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.”
― John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You

tags: doubt, fear, friendship, holy-spirit, humanity, mind, peace, spirituality, thinking, worry

195 likes

#20

“you must be careful never to allow doubt to paralyze you. always take the decisions you need to take, even if you're not sure you're doing the right thing. You'll never go wrong if, when you make a decision, you keep in mind an old German proverb: 'The devil is in the detail.' Remember that proverb and you'll always be able to turn a wrong decision into a right one.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

tags: decisions, doubt, inspirational

217 likes

#21

“And I realized that I’d tolerated him this long because of self-doubt.”
― Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

tags: doubt, ego

174 likes

#22

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

tags: doubt, enlightenment, error, fallibility, humanity, humility, mankind, poetry, reason

188 likes

#23

“Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.”
― Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic's Notebook

tags: doubt, self-consciousness

86 likes

#24

“In love we often doubt what we most believe.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

tags: doubt, love

86 likes

#25

“Dubium sapientiae initium. (Doubt is the origin of wisdom.)”
― Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

tags: doubt, logic, philosophy

74 likes

#26

“Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,
for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it;
for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
He that would silence doubt is filled with fear;
the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands.
But he that fears no doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock.
He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge;
the work of his hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth.”
― Robert T. Weston

tags: critical-thinking, doubt, doubts, faith, falsehood, scientific-method, truth

10 likes

#27

“Confidence is what we get when we take fear, face it and replace it.”
― Tim Fargo

tags: afraid, agitation, alarm, angst, anxiety, apprehension, apprehensiveness, bold, boldness, confidence, confidence-and-attitude, confident, consternation, dismay, distress, doubt, doubtful, doubtfulness, doubting, doubts, dread, fear, fear-of-failure, fearfulness, fears, foreboding, fright, hesitation, horror, motivation, nerves, nervousness, panic, perturbation, terror, trepidation, unease, uneasiness, worry

37 likes

#28

“In the bitter waves of woe,
Beaten and tossed about
By the sullen winds that blow
From the desolate shores of doubt,

When the anchors that faith had cast
Are dragging in the gale,
I am quietly holding fast
To the things that cannot fail:

In the darkest night of the year,
When the stars have all gone out, That courage is better than fear, That faith is truer than doubt;

And fierce though the fiends may fight, And long though the angels hide,
I know that Truth and Right
Have the universe on their side;

And somewhere, beyond the stars,
Is a Love that is better than fate;
When the night unlocks her bars
I shall see Him, and I will wait”
― Washington Gladden

tags: doubt, faith, inspirational

3 likes

#29

“We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

tags: doubt, love, relationship, soulmate

46 likes

#30

“Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well.... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.

If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

tags: beginnings, doubt, light, love, strength

165 likes

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