Mia > Mia's Quotes

“Uskokaa pois, kuolemaa ei ole; ei ole untakaan. Kasvamme vain ajasta toiseen. Elämään on suhtauduttava kärsivällisesti, sillä se on ikuinen.”
― Karel Čapek, Gardener's Year

“When I was little I didn’t know
I’d grow up.
Or I knew but didn’t feel it.

Time at that age doesn’t exist.
Each day it’s the same kitchen table
With the same backyard outside,
And sadness, when felt,
Is sadness, but you aren’t sad.”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water: the fish still swims about, but the net surrounds it, and the fisherman will take it when he wishes.”
― Ivan Turgenev, On the Eve

“I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited and Other Stories

“Niin viimein auringolle sanon: paista!
Ja leimahtaen herää värit valmiit,
niin että alla joka muodon selvän
näät tuhat merkitystä suunnatonta
ja hetken huiman edessäsi aukee
maailma niinkuin alku-unessas.”
― Aila Meriluoto, Lasimaalaus

“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.”
― Marcel Proust

“Magnificent"

When will this inner night – the universe – end
And I – my soul – have my day?
When will I wake up from being awake?
I don’t know. The sun shines on high
And cannot be looked at.
The stars coldly blink
And cannot be counted.
The heart beats aloofly
And cannot be heard.
When will this drama without theater
– Or this theater without drama – end
So that I can go home?
Where? How? When?
O cat staring at me with eyes of life, Who lurks in your depths?
It’s Him! It’s him!
Like Joshua he’ll order the sun to stop, and I’ll wake up,
And it will be day.
Smile, my soul, in your slumber!
Smile, my soul: it will be day!”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“Stages



As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“Shall we ever meet again?
And who will meet again?
Meeting is for strangers.
Meeting is for those who do not know each other.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
― Isaac Asimov

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“Although I cannot see your face
As you flip these poems awhile,
Somewhere from some far-off place
I hear you laughing---and I smile.”
― Shel Silverstein

“When one’s dead, one’s dead… This squirrel will become earth all in his time. And still later on, there’ll grow new trees from him, with new squirrels skipping about in them. Do you think that’s so very sad?”
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

“A new door to the Unbelievable, to the Possible, a new day that can always bring you anything if you have no objection to it.”
― Tove Jansson, The Exploits of Moominpappa

“And that's how it was, that night,
shadow and space, earth
and time,
something that runs and falls
and passes.
And that's how all the nights
go over the earth,
leaving only a vague
black odor.
A leaf falls,
a drop
on the earth
muffles its sound,
the forest sleeps, the waters,
the meadows,
the bells,
the eyes.

I hear you and you breathe,
my love,
we sleep.”
― Pablo Neruda, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”
― Matthew Arnold

“You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep