Gergana > Gergana's Quotes

“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.”
― Erica Jong

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

“To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

“A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.”
― Erica Jong

“the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.”
― Erica Jong

“Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women’s self development is self-sacrifice.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“There is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.”
― Eve Ensler

“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ”
― Henry David Thoreau

“In the old days the worst part of my depression used to be the astonishment it caused me, the scandalized way in which I fought against it. Nowadays, on the other hand, I accept it cheerfully enough, like an old familiar friend.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

“We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“It's the pausing and the stopping, perhaps going backward and losing some time, not being able to do everything we're supposed to do, that serves the soul. That's the enchantment that feeds the soul.”
― Thomas Moore

“It's my conviction that slight shifts in imagination have more impact on living than major efforts at change... deep changes in life follow movements in imagination.”
― Thomas Moore

“We no longer get work out of our children; today we get meaning.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Ускореното темпо на живота днес по-скоро представлява опит за самолечение-макар и несполучил. Действително вихреното темпо на живота може много лесно да бъде разбрано, ако го схванем като опит за самоупояване; човек бяга от една вътрешна пустош и празнота и бягайки, се хвърля във водовъртежа.”
― Виктор Франкъл

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. ... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Много по-важно от това да презираш себе си (свръхсъвестност) или да зачиташ себе си (свръхсъзнателност)-много по-важно би било в крайна сметка напълно да забравиш себе си.”
― Виктор Франкъл

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Има едни такива процепи във времето, секунди преди да падне вечерта, минути преди лятото да остане на някоя от гарите, чието име никога няма да си спомниш, има такива процепи, в които как да кажа…светът не е от този свят. Сякаш се е омагьосал отново, ти си се омагьосал отново, друг си и, прощавай, по-хубав. Поне така изглеждаш в отражението на стъклото.”
― Георги Господинов, Невидимите кризи

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando