Alvin Abubilla > Alvin's Quotes

“I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
― Albert Einstein

“Reading poetry is like undressing before a bath. You don't undress out of fear that your clothes will become wet. You undress because you want the water to touch you. You want to completely immerse yourself in the feeling of the water and to emerge anew.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click 'I agree'.”
― Bill Maher

“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.”
― Richard Nixon

“Without inspiration, we’re all like a box of matches that will never be lit.”
― David Archuleta, Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance

“I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather.

Here are some obvious things about the weather:

It's real.
You can't change it by wishing it away.
If it's dark and rainy, it really is dark and rainy, and you can't alter it.
It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row.

BUT
it will be sunny one day.
It isn't under one's control when the sun comes out, but come out it will.
One day.

It really is the same with one's moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. Depression, anxiety, listlessness - these are all are real as the weather - AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE'S CONTROL.
Not one's fault.

BUT
They will pass: really they will.

In the same way that one really has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes, "Today is a really crap day," is a perfectly realistic approach. It's all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. "Hey-ho, it's raining inside; it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow, and when it does I shall take full advantage.”
― Stephen Fry

“Studying wine taught me that there was a very big difference between soil and dirt: dirt is to soul what zombies are to humans. Soil is full of life, while dirt is devoid of it.”
― Olivier Magny, Into Wine: An Invitation to Pleasure

“…the power of analogy doesn’t come from noticing a mere similarity of parts […] It comes from noticing relations among the parts, even if the parts themselves are very different. […] For an analogy to be scientifically useful, though, the correspondences can’t apply to a part of one thing that merely resembles a part of the other. They have to apply to the relationship between the parts, and even better, the relationship between the relationships, and to the relationships between the relationships between the relationships.”
― Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

“Now and then, teaching may approach poetry, and now and then it may approach profanity. May I tell you a little story about the great Einstein? I listened once to Einstein as he talked to a group of physicists in a party. "Why have all the electrons the same charge?" said he. "Well, why are all the little balls in the goat dung of the same size?" Why did Einstein say such things? Just to make some snobs to raise their eyebrows? He was not disinclined to do so, I think. Yet, probably, it went deeper. I do not think that the overheard remark of Einstein was quite casual. At any rate, I learnt something from it: Abstractions are important; use all means to make them more tangible. Nothing is too good or too bad, too poetical or too trivial to clarify your abstractions. As Montaigne put it: The truth is such a great thing that we should not disdain any means that could lead to it. Therefore, if the spirit moves you to be a little poetical, or a little profane, in your class, do not have the wrong kind of inhibition." - George Polya's Mathematical Discovery, Volume 11, pp 102, 1962.”
― George Pólya, Mathematical Discovery: On Understanding, Learning and Teaching Problem Solving Combined Edition

“Metaphors, similes, and analogies sharpen the sword of our writing. They allow us to cut quickly through the fat to the meat of our purpose (p. 146).”
― Andrew T. Le Peau, Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality

“Seeing is the property of our eyes. But we also use this word in other senses, when we apply the power of vision to knowledge generally. We do not say 'Hear how that flashes', or 'Smell how bright that is', or 'Taste how that shines' or 'Touch how that gleams'. Of all these things we say 'see'. But we say not only 'See how that light shines', which only the eyes can perceive, but also 'See how that sounds, see what smells, see what tastes, see how hard that is'. So the general experience of the senses is the lust, as scripture says, of the eyes, because seeing is a function in which eyes hold the first place but other senses claim the word for themselves by analogy when they are exploring any department of knowledge.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“A full moon hung across the heavens like a pregnant belly.”
― Kien Nguyen, The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood