It is when we are confronted with poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth.
~ Kathleen Basford
If this time is our only time, and it is, then surely we do owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to pay attention, to look deeply, to listen closely, and to respond to all of it, somehow, with love and gratitude.
~ Katrina Kenison
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
~ Blaise Pascal
Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. If this sounds difficult and unnerving, it’s because it is. Sartre does not deny that the need to keep making decisions brings constant anxiety. He heightens this anxiety by pointing out that what you do really matters. You should make your choices as though you were choosing on behalf of the whole of humanity, taking the entire burden of responsibility for how the human race behaves. If you avoid this responsibility by fooling yourself that you are the victim of circumstances or of someone else’s bad advice, you’re failing to meet the demands of human life and choosing a fake existence, cut off from your own authenticity.
~ Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café
True emptiness is also an openness of being. It is an ongoing receptivity to the wonder of life.
~ Beverly Lanzetta
‘Emptiness’ means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life. The word emptiness should not scare us. It is a wonderful word. To be empty does not mean non-existent. Emptiness is the ground of everything. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Hope is roving gypsy
With laughter on her tongue,
And the blue sky and sunshine
Alone, can keep her young;
And year by year she lingers
Under a budding tree
To join the red-wings’ chorus:
On-caree!~ Dora Reed Goodale, 1902
Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.
~ Salvador Dali
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist…..Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
~ Stephen Hawking
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.
~ George Harrison
There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?
~ Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters
