I wish I knew when I was going to die,' ninety-six-year-old Dame Frances Anne often said, 'I wish I knew.' 'Why, Dame?' 'Then I should know what to read next.
The only time I really think is when I smoke, and I quit smoking years ago.
Well, dearest, what would you tell a farmer who had an over-abundant harvest? To plant less, of course!"... "I am not complaining about the frequency of the planting," she said. "I’d just rather not reap a crop every year.
When something needs to be ironed I put it in the ironing basket. If a year goes by and the item is still in the basket I throw the item away. This is a good system since eventually I end up only with clothes that don’t need ironing.
sad things are beautiful only from a distance therefore you just want to get away from them from a distance of one hundred and thirty years ....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful
I do hope that when the day comes, whether in 1, 10, or 100 years, I don’t want you to think of me and feel sad.
It is an inside joke of history that all its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space.
Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus attention on what matters most.
When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).
How many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as in a mirror; seem to know and yet never know the inward life; never enter the other soul; and part at last, with but the vaguest notion of the universe on the borders of which they have...
It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.
Once in a while, in the middle of an ordinary life… love gives us a fairy tale.” “It’s how I feel,” he said, swallowing hard. “I think I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen years old.
Just then there came the wheezy sound of an accordion. It was an odd little tune that, had he been alive exactly one hundred and fifty years later, the scarf-wearing pirate would have recognized as the first few bars from ‘Theme to Murder, She Wrot...
Meteorologist see perfect in strange things, and the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event is one of them. My God, thought Case, this is the perfect storm.
On Titan the molecules that have been raining down like manna from heaven for the last 4 billion years might still be there largely unaltered deep-frozen awaiting the chemists from Earth
Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?
We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.
You've been the rabbi here for thirty years and these guys who've never set foot here want to decide who should be rabbi or not. And to lead prayer in Hebrew for Jews who speak Arabic, they want you to write in French. So I say they're nuts.
Time flies. Time flies faster every year. Time flies whether you're having fun or not, whether you're living your life big or small, whether you surround yourself with fear or laughter.
I made a t-shirt that says, "Today's my birthday" on it, so that I can ask for hugs from strangers and point to the text on my tee as the reason why they should oblige. It's not a once-a-year t-shirt, as I wear it every Tuesday.
I'm a year older than 365 days ago, and I'm having trouble bending my knees and my lower back is killing me. Everything reminds me of death. Especially bending over all day to steal the flowers off all the graves in the cemetery.
