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Quote by Robert Grudin

Work

Time and the Art of Living

This work examines the relationship between time and human experience, considering both practical and philosophical dimensions of temporal awareness. The book encourages readers to reflect on their relationship with time beyond conventional productivity frameworks, suggesting that how one perceives moments contributes significantly to overall quality of life. Through various observations and considerations, the author presents ideas about the importance of present-moment awareness and the value of intentional living. The approach blends insights about efficient time use with deeper reflections on what constitutes a well-lived life, proposing that true mastery of time involves understanding its subjective nature rather than simply managing schedules and tasks. more

Author

Robert Grudin
Robert Grudin

Robert Grudin is an American writer renowned for his contributions to literary criticism and theory. His work spans various domains including literary criticism, fiction, and poetry. more

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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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.”

“You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.”