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Living Quotes

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Living Quotes

“When you reach a certain age, you see that time is all we have. By which I mean, moments like those springing deer this morning, and watching your mother be born, and sitting at the dining room table here waiting for the phone to ring and announce that a certain baby (you) had been born, or that day when all of us hiked out at Point Lobos. That extremely loud seal, your sister's scarf drifting down, down to that black, briny boulder, the replacement you so generously bought her in Monterey, how pleased you made her with your kindness. Those things were real. That is what (that is all) one gets. All this other stuff is real only to the extent that it interferes with those moments.”

“My Darling Child Yesterday, I was a child Today, I am a Mother So much like your Grandmother I realised another life Was growing inside of me I had to embrace another being As part of my daily living That is how I found my healing You are my precious gift My love for you is so deep When I held you in my arms I could not help but admire Such a beautiful Soul I sang you a song To express my joy Of being a parent to you I knew there was a reason You were chosen To journey with me So, here is my promise Will be the best Mom I can ever be I will stand by you forever And no one can take on The role I play My darling child”

“I want to wake up tomorrow feeling as good as I do today. I want this day and this drive to never end. I want the laughter to keep going, into the next and the next and the next. I want to dance in a club. I want to cup someone's face. I want to be texted back as quickly as I text back. I want to lie beside someone for so long that I forget that they're another person and think I'm talking to myself. I want a friend to race ahead of me at a crowded market so I'm left actually talking to myself. I want free education and health care and housing for everyone everywhere. I want to feel better so I can do better, for the world and everyone in it. I want us to slow if not halt if not reverse the effects of climate change. I want to read out loud to someone till my mouth gets dry. I want to give a child a piggyback. I want to climb a tree. I want to skip down a pavement scuffing my toes. I want to choke because I've eaten a meal too fast and I want to laugh when I do. I want to hang a picture. I want to smell a book. I want to cradle a cat as if it's a baby. I want to go into love boldly, like I do everything else. I want to not be incapacitated by it. I want to learn, always. I want to live.”

“A much-underrated and incredibly simple considering factor when it comes to choosing a partner is how much you love their company. Since my friends have started having babies and I've watched how they operate as couples, it's become even more apparent to me that the most important thing in a relationship is how well you work as a team. It's the hackneyed notion for a reason: a couple needs to be really, really good friends.”

“I navigated a couple of sharp curves and then saw another meaningless sign in Cyrillic, so I kept going. And then I was in the entrance of a tunnel. And then I was driving in the tunnel at fifty kilometers per hour and it was pitch-black all around. I was driving blind! I couldn’t see anything ahead or on either side of me. My stunned brain processed the fact that the first thing I had to do was to stop the bike, so I slowly braked while disengaging the gearbox. We passed the town of Katerini, where the road widened and had been improved with shoulders and guardrails along the waterside… I was just about to go to ninety kilometers per hour when we went around a curve and there, straight in front of us, was an enormous mountain with a snow cap. Charlie yelled, “Holy shit! Look at that!” I was awestruck. I knew it was Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece and the home of the gods… “Where else could the gods have lived?” I asked.”

“The ferry left on time…. The splash of the waters and the rumble of the engine kept such a steady drumbeat that these sounds accentuated the silence around me. Maybe in Crete, Rhea, Mother Earth, would define my destiny but I insisted it wasn’t going to be what my parents were like. I watched the stars drift by until I dozed off.”

“As I wound my way up the mountain, the road began to perform multiple switchbacks like a snake in motion. I had to carefully maneuver through the 180-degree switchbacks at walking speed with one leg dangling off the side of the bike for balance or support, as needed. The road became steeper as it clung to the mountainside like a creeper vine. It was no more that twelve feet wide… Higher and higher the road went, but I didn’t look over the edge until I came to a switchback where I had to stop the bike to walk it through the curve. When I stood with the bike between my legs, I saw that I was less than five feet from what had to be an eight hundred-foot drop-off. There were no guardrails.”

“Beautiful women can be like dynamite,” (I said to Paul.)… “Now, now. There’s nothing wrong with dynamite if it’s treated right,” he said. It’s the men who go around with lighted matches that cause the trouble. By that, I mean they’ve got their dicks hanging out of their trousers all the time. You can see how that can be a  problem for the ladies?”

“Usha told me, “We all must leave this earth one day. Some may leave today, some tomorrow, and some may leave after many years. There is nothing to regret when you see someone leaving. However, you should never regret the way you lived when you are about to leave. So, make sure we live our lives in a good way so that it is fruitful not only for us but for many others who are with us.”

“Hey there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live- and to live the best i know how. Sure it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And i'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not anymore. I'm not a teenager anymore. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.”

“And he had to say farewell to his hands, his eyes, to hunger and thirst, to love, to playing the lute, to sleeping and waking, to everything. Tomorrow a bird would fly through the air and Goldmund would no longer see it, a girl would sing in a window and he would not hear her song, the river would run and the dark fish would swim silently, the wind would blow and sweep the yellow leaves on the ground, the sun would shine and stars would blink in the sky, young men would go dancing, the first snow would lie on the distant mountains—everything would go on, trees would cast their shadows, people would look gay or sad out of their living eyes, dogs would bark, cows would low in the barns of villages, and all of it without Goldmund.”

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us in time become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by and leave us there alone.”

“I have lived in seventy-two cities over the course of my life," the old man said, proudly. "There is no part of the world, I know nothing about." The young people on the bench beside him looked at him with admiration. "And which city did you like best?" one asked him. The old man thought for a long time, then sighed. "Now I look back," he said, "I think I was happiest in the village in the country where I grew up. If it had been the second place I had lived, I think I should have stayed there my whole life. But because it was the first, I convinced myself that there must be somewhere better and have never stopped looking for it.”

“और सबसे अच्छी बात कि किस तरह हर कोई अपने जीवन में पीछे मुड़ कर देखने पर, ख़ुद पर घटने वाली हरेक अच्छी-बुरी घटना की कड़ियाँ एक अर्थपूर्ण ढंग से जोड़ पाता है. अपने होने की प्रक्रिया में कैसे हर कोई, थोड़ा-थोड़ा ही सही, संवरता जाता है.”

“एक तरह से देखा जाए तो - हर परिस्थिति, हर खेल में हमेशा केवल दो ही तो खिलाड़ी होते हैं | एक हम ख़ुद और एक निष्ठुरता. जब भी हम खुद को हारा हुआ पाते हैं, शायद कोई निष्ठुरता ही तो जीतती है हमेशा. हालातों की निष्ठुरता. ज़माने की निष्ठुरता. क़िस्मत की निष्ठुरता. संबंधो की निष्ठुरता. ख़ुद अपनी अपने से कभी निष्ठुरता.”