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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I keep remembering from my early student days how I would walk at night through the streets, my hands bunched into fists in the pocket of my coat, my head hunched deep into my collar, and how I used to say, 'I want to work, I shall work'--and then I would come back home and be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.”

“I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

“I keep saying there's no Choice, and what I've meant is that you can't choose: you have no right or ability to select one of the two alternatives. But I didn't go far enough. There's no Choice because the Choice itself is wrong. It's a false dilemma. The alternatives are not alternatives at all. Long versus short, quiet versus heroic: they're the same. In the scope of infinity, in a universe with no edge, human history is a flare and human consciousness is a blink. All lives are short and all lives are quiet. But all lives are glorious too, Cal. To live! To live like a human! You are ordinary and extraordinary all at once. You have a heart that contracts and relaxes and beats out your moments. You are alive and you know you are alive. Your too-short time is long enough. Long, short, humdrum, heroic: toss those considerations aside. Nothing to choose there. But we do have a choice. We do. Is consciousness a tragedy or a miracle? Does nothing matter, or does everything matter? That's the choice. That's the real choice. And I've chosen. My cousin, my match, listen to me and tell them all. Tell Trevor and Ben and Matt and Lill. Tell my father. Tell the ten thousand Madonnas, each and every one. I am Jesse, I have a choice, and I choose everything.”

“I keep seeing my life darting off in the different directions it could have taken, as chance and circumstance, temperament and desire, open and close, open and close gates, routes, roadways. And yet there feels like an inevitability to who I am--just as of all the planets in all the universes, planet blue, this planet Earth, is the one that is home.”

“I Keep Six Honest Serving Men ..." I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest from nine till five, For I am busy then, As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, For they are hungry men. But different folk have different views; I know a person small— She keeps ten million serving-men, Who get no rest at all! She sends'em abroad on her own affairs, From the second she opens her eyes— One million Hows, two million Wheres, And seven million Whys!”

“I keep staring at the bag in Mrs. Parks's hand: yellows, greens, blues, whites, pastel colors so soft they look as if they have faded in the sea. The washed colors of the sea and sleep. Pajama colors. The colors of baby clothes. In my nose is the smell of my brothers' heads after they are born. Maybe this is why people making journeys buy saltwater taffy. It gives you the lovely dreamy sense that you can start all over again from the beginning.”

“I keep telling my American friends, "If you think of Donald Trump as only something that is happening inside the United States, you're missing it." Because there are Trump-like events happening across the Western world, in Warsaw Pact countries, in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands. As we speak, the second-largest party in the Dutch legislature - who's more level-headed than the Dutch? - is Geert Wilders's party, which is a very Trump-like party, and they've got 33 out of 150 seats.”