Quade moustakas > Recent Status Updates

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, “

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, an so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house?
I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”

“He believed that anyone who did not like to drink was either sick and/or crazy or had in him some obscure viciousness. He believed that the soul of a non-drinker was dried up and shrunken, that the virtuous pose of the non-drinker was a cover for some nameless and disgusting practice.”

“for the next eighten years knew him better than I knew anyone, and perhaps I did not know him at all. Maybe it was that way with all of his friends. He was different from anyone and yet so like that everyone found himself in Ed, and that might be one of the reasons his death had such an impact. It wasn't Ed who had died but a large and important part of oneself.”

“How could one make an Indian understand the medicine which labors to save a syphilitic, and the gas and bomb to kill him when he is well, the armies which build health so that death will be more active and violent. It is quite possible that to an ignorant Indian these might not be evidences of a great civilization, but rather of inconceivable nonsense.”

“It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be missed without being gone; to be loved without satiety. How beautiful one is and how desirable; for in a few moments one will have ceased to exist.”

“Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated."

“The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man’s appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.”

nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything—by meals, by a fly that settles on one's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live.

“if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God.”

“There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

"They [the Clutters] never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it's just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it."

“you are a human being with free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman, you are as an animal.”

“You despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself- in time destructive as bullets.”