Jay Simpson > Jay's Quotes

“... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.”
― Rob Schultheis, Fool's Gold: Lives, Loves, and Misadventures in the Four Corners Country

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”
― John Muir, Our National Parks

“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties”
― John Muir

“I am the wilderness lost in man.”
― Mervyn Peake

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
― John A. Shedd

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
― Maya Angelou

“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!”
― Maya Angelou

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”
― Hafiz

“I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious -
So kiss me.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems Inspired by Hafiz

“Let's get loose
With
Compassion,

Let's drown in the delicious
Ambience of
Love.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”
― Nelson Mandela

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
― Nelson Mandela

“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
― Nelson Mandela

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
― Nelson Mandela

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

“ As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
― Nelson Mandela

“Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.”
― Nelson Mandela

“We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“He lay on his back in his blankets and looked our where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In the false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore