Carmen > Carmen's Quotes

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
― Pythagoras

“How come we play war and not peace?"
"Too few role models.”
― Bill Watterson

“When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
― Jeanne DuPrau , The People of Sparks

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The mason stirs.
Words!
Pens are too light.
Take a chisel to write.”
― Basil Bunting, Briggflatts

“The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”
― May Sarton

“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.”
― Erich Fromm

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea. ”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Potential has a shelf life.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good.
I know too much to be good. I know myself.
I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“We have begun to slam doors, and to throw things. I throw my purse, an ashtray, a package of chocolate chips, which breaks on impact. We are picking up chocolate chips for days. Jon throws a glass of milk, the milk, not the glass: he knows his own strength, as I do not. He throws a box of Cheerios, unopened.
The things I throw miss, although they are worse things. The things he throws hit, but are harmless.
I begin to see how the line is crossed, between histrionics and murder.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“How difficult it is to see
The things we love
With all this shadow round us,
This brief time we're here.”
― Ruth Padel, Rembrandt Would Have Loved You

“Every choice is a loss. The past is not where you left it.”
― Ruth Padel

“Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison.”
― Zadie Smith, NW