anna

“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“But people have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can’t see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Indeed to have seen Him was enough providing that the spark ignited in the soul was fanned to flame by meditation and selfless prayer. Never can I be thankful enough that I became ignited with this Flame. It was about this time, seven weeks after meeting 'Abdu'l-Bahá, that I began to say a little hymn to myself: "If every drop of my blood had a million tongues and every tongue sang praises throughout eternity sufficient thanksgiving could not be uttered.”
― Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom