You can be sunk low or as a skunk and still have a joy in your heart. Joy lives like one of those spinning things---a gyroscope in your heart. It doesn't seem to have any connection to circumstance, good or bad.
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war.
Author describes one monarch's impressive table but conveys a contemporary's observation, "the weightiest thing at dinner was the conversation".
Poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thing when the mind is free of society. One must become poor inwardly for then there is no seeking, no asking, no desire, no - nothing! It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which ...
Seriously, why aren't you on drugs?" Cath walked past her out of the room. "Are you a licensed psychiatrist? Or do you just play one on TV?" "I'm on drugs," Reagan said. "They're a beautiful thing.
You know power is the best thing in the world because as soon as you have it, everyone is trying to take it from you. No one is ever trying to take your friends away, so that's how you know they're less important.
You don’t know what it’s like to worry you’ll start to despise the people who help you, the ones you should love, because they’re healthy and you’re not, because they’re kind and you’re this angry, frustrated . . . thing.
I know that when things are at their worst, something better is just around the corner if we just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.
Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.
My eyes wondered from one end of the mountains to the other. 'Do you think they go on forever?' 'The mountains?' Aritomo said, as though he had been asked that question before. 'They fade away. Like all things.
Tonight I had wrought magic powerful enough to have drawn the attention of a goddess. In that moment, though, I was certain of one thing: Of all the magic I possessed, none of it could begin to compare to the magic he and I created together.
She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims...
You may only get this one life – but lived free of submissive reverence – that is still a thing of rampant beauty.
Remember, however bad things might be right now, this moment will pass and your life will continue to be a good one.
Revenge is like politics, one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.
You possess other people's...bodies." He accepted that statement with a nod. "Do you want to possess my body?" "I want to do a lot of things to your body, but that's not one of them.
Belatedly, I notice how much easier it is to walk on these sticks when you can't feel your legs. Lesson number one for hooch wear, be drunk. It might make dancing more of a challenge, but I wasn't feeling a thing and it was beautiful.
We should've been different breeds. There can only be one lion in a small cage. It's not important if the other lion is sleeping or crouching in the corner. The only important thing is that...it's a lion.
The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.
