Ashwin > Ashwin's Quotes

“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Sorry.

Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.

Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? today and tomorrow.
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? the ocean and truth.”
― Christina Rossetti

“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge the more grief.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”
― Hugh MacLeod

“sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“Geniuses don't become geniuses until they find the right moron to compare themselves to.”
― James McGregor

“An elementary school student asked me the NOT “politically correct” question, “Is an idiot smarter than a moron?” I had to Google it because I was afraid to respond in today’s PC society and didn’t want to offend him, his parents, or anyone else. Here’s what I found.

Technically, a moron is smarter than an idiot. An imbecile is also smarter than an idiot.

Although today the words are considered insulting and derogatory, prior to the 1960s they were widely used as actual psychology terms associated with intelligence on an IQ test.

An IQ between:
00-25 = Idiot
26-50 = Imbecile
51-70 = Moron

Explaining all of this to a nine year old with an IQ of 130 made me feel like society has turned all adults into one of the above, myself included.

When I told him that I’m afraid to openly say it, the nine year old said, “Adults are idiots!”
― Ray Palla, H: Infidels of Oil

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Misunderstanding - A "Missed Understanding" because of the human preference to Assumption over Clarification.”
― Drishti Bablani

“Single is not a status, it is a word that describes a person who is strong enough to live and enjoy life without depending on others.”
― prixie

“Delete the italics I am not popular enough. I am not good enough. I am not strong enough. I am not lovable enough. I am not attractive enough. I am not cool enough. I am not hot enough. I am not clever enough. I am not funny enough. I am not educated enough. I am not Oxford enough. I am not literary enough. I am not rich enough. I am not posh enough. I am not young enough. I am not tough enough. I am not well-traveled enough. I am not talented enough. I am not cultured enough. I am not smooth-skinned enough. I am not thin enough. I am not muscular enough. I am not famous enough. I am not interesting enough. I am not worth enough. (I am enough.)”
― Matt Haig

“The more your money works for you, the less you have to work for money.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“There are far too many silent sufferers.  Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.”
― Aesop

“To wait is to wisely resign myself to the fact that my ‘timetable’ is too often a ‘table’ with two legs that won’t stand up no matter how much ‘time’ I give it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.”
― Suzy Kassem

“Leave something for someone but dont leave someone for something.”
― Enid Blyton, Five on a Hike Together

“To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.”
― Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife

“The act of you leaving was just the full stop at the end of a terrible sentence. Fact is, I lost you long before you ever left.”
― Beau Taplin, Buried Light

“It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body's musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements.
Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward.
Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement.
The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as "pneuma" is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga.”
― Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body

“The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remeber.”
― Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

“Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers--strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.”
― Barbara Katz Rothman

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”
― Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters