Geri > Geri's Quotes

“I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a good teacher and gotten the proper training, she’d be so much further along!’ But I was wrong about that. She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I’ve seen my share of people like that. At first you think they’re amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you’re overwhelmed. you think, ‘I could never do that in a million years.’ But that’s as far as they go. They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had the discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they’ve been able to play things well without any effort and they’ve had people telling them how great they are from the time they’re little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They’ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they’ve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required or character building. It’s a tragedy.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“The sure way to success is so simple, but it requires character, guts, persistence, the mastery of lower jobs to be ready for the better ones.”
― Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Living

“Pete couldn't believe how sanctimonious somebody could be just because they'd once had a soldering iron stuck up their arse.”
― Alexei Sayle, Barcelona Plates

“Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.”
― OshO

“Take hold of your own life.
See that the whole existence is celebrating.
These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious.
The rivers and the oceans are wild,
and everywhere there is fun,
everywhere there is joy and delight.
Watch existence,
listen to the existence and become part of it.”
― Osho

“They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!”
― Osho, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously

“The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Many people have come and left, and it has been always good because they emptied some space for better people. It is a strange experience, that those who have left me have always left places for a better quality of people. I have never been a loser”
― Osho

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite. ”
― Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

“Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgotten dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being someone else, and spend their whole lives traveling place to place.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“Sand lines my soul which is filled with the breath of the ocean.”
― A.D. Posey

“Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them any more. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had.”
― Michael Ende, Momo

“Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”
― Michael Ende, Momo

“Oh, we're always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people.
-Nanny Ogg”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan

“Remember: the rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field - it was always there - where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

“Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow