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Time and the Art of Living

Book by Robert Grudin · 32 quotes · Time, Ifs, Life

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Time and the Art of Living Quotes

“Chess, which exists predominantly in two dimensions, is one of the world's most difficult games. Three-dimensional chess is an invitation to insanity. But human relationships, even of the simplest order, are like a kind of four-dimensional chess, a game whose pieces and positions change subtly and inexorably between moves, whose players stare dumbly while their powerful positions deteriorate into hopeless predicaments and while improbable combinations suddenly become inevitable. To make matters worse, some games are open to any number of players, and all sides are expected to win.”

WorldHumansKindTwoMatterMovingOrderThreeGamesWinningDifficultSidesPowerfulNumbersPiecesFourPlayerPositionExpectedChessInevitableCombinationStaringInsanityDimensionsHopelessSimplestInvitationsHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsImprobablePredicaments
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“The limitation in our ability to perceive broad distinctions in scope can be applied to our moral and temporal responses.... We agonize over a dinner menu, or have engine trouble on the way to work; and for seconds or minutes our cosmos shrinks to a miniscule volume of being, an epic of cheese sauces or tragedy of fanbelts.”

WayAbilityMoralTroubleMinutesTragedyResponseDinnerLimitationPerceiveDistinctionCosmosBroadsSecondsEnginesVolumeCheeseEpicScopeShrinksSauceMenus
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“True intimacy is a human constant. People of all types find it equally hard to achieve, equally precious to hold. Age, education, social status, make little difference here; even genius does not presuppose the talent to reveal one's self completely and completely absorb one's self in another personality. Intimacy is to love what concentration is to work: a simultaneous drawing together to attention and release of energy.”

PeopleLifeHumansLittlesDoeSelfHardAgeTogetherEnergySocialDifferencesAttentionAchieveTalentTypePersonalityGeniusConstantDrawingOld AgeReleaseIntimacyConcentrationSimultaneousSocial StatusTrue Intimacy
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“Free men and women... can think across time, viewing their own lives, inclusive of past, present, and future, as architectural wholes, static in mental space. They can therefore see, as others cannot, the cracks and buttresses of repeated action, the points of stress, the established framework. They are not perfect; but they are less imperfect than we by a full dimension of being.”

ThinkingMenLifeActionPastSpacePerfectFutureMen And WomenStressDimensionsCracksImperfectFrameworkNot PerfectStaticFree ManPast PresentPast Present And Future
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“That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally, the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defenses, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that is has occurred within us.”

IfsLifeLooksDoeRealityChangeMorningFoolLateCarefulDefenseToo LateRedressSentinels
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“If the estimated age of the cosmos were shortened to seventy-two years, a human life would take about ten seconds. But look at time the other way. Each day is a minor eternity of over 86,000 seconds. During each second, the number of distinct molecular functions going on within the human body is comparable to the number of seconds in the estimated age of the cosmos. A few seconds are long enough for a revolutionary idea, a startling communication, a baby's conception, a wounding insult, a sudden death. Depending on how we think of them, our lives can be infinitely long or infinitely short.”

IfsThinkingWayYearsHumansLooksLongTwoIdeasEnoughBodyAgeNumbersOur LivesCommunicationBabyTenEternityFunctionHuman LifeRevolutionaryInsultEach DayCosmosTwo YearsConceptionSecondsMinorsSeventiesHuman BodyRevolutionary IdeasSudden Death
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“Great drama, like the energy implicit in every atom, is eternally around and within us, but liberated only by coincidence, ceremony, creativity, periods reaching completion, pressures reaching the bursting point, and the simple but painful cultivation of awareness.”

EnergySimpleCreativityAwarenessPeriodsDramaPressurePainfulReachingAtomsCoincidenceCeremonyLiberatedCompletionCultivationBurstingImplicit
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“What do I mean by “locked in time”? I mean, first of all, that we characteristically view mobile phenomena in immobile terms. We see processes like love and education as established circumstances rather than as complex temporal organisms whose lives depend on regular nourishment and renewal. Conversely, we tend to accept our own fear, weakness and ignorance as chronic disabilities rather than facing them, as we should, with the awareness that they are temporary and surmountable. Like still cameras, our minds consistently convert motion into stasis. In our language about time we resort to rocklike absolutisms – creation, completion, means, end, permanence, annihilation – terms whose static and extreme implications make them poor approximations of history and experience… We have little use at all for that most subtle and suggestive of words, renewal.”

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