By the river Piedra I sat down and wept - Paulo Coelho
I looked at the other, there in the corner of the room, fragile, exhausted, disillusioned. Controlling and enslaving what should really be free: her emotions. Trying to judge her future loves by the rules of her past suffering.
But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice or dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck a fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love wherever we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.
Jonnathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
When you come to the edge of all light you have known, and are about to step out into darkness, faith is knowing one of the two will happen - There will be something to stand on, or you will be taught to fly.
Reality is simply the name we give to our most cherished way of looking at the world.
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
As my visits with Morrie go on, I begin to read about death and how different cultures view the final passage.
Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Well, look at it. Every piece of it is there because the house needs it - and for no other reason. The rooms in which you'll live made the shape. The relation of masses was determined by the distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the distribution of space, method of construction, and emphasis of the principle that makes it stand. Your own eyes go through a structural process. When you look at the house, you can follow each step, you can see it rise, you know what made it and why it stands. But you've seen buildings with columns that support nothing, with purposeless cornices, with pilasters, moldings, false arches, false windows. You've seen buildings that look as if they contained one large hall, they have solid columns, and single solid windows six floors high. But you enter and find six stories inside. Or buildings that contain a single hall, but with a facade cut up into floor lines, band courses, tiers of windows. Do you understand the difference? Your house is made by its own needs. Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive of your house is in the house. The determining motive of others in the audience.
*A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom.
* Illusory joy is often far more worth than genuine sorrow.
* Love - The word is not enough for what it is
* Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.
* Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, it is knowing that they will pass away.
* Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
* Those who look outside dream, those who look inside awaken.
Shakespeare in Julius Caesar-
Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all wonders that I yet have heard it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.
