John Koenig Quotes

Zenosyne.

It's actually just after you're born that life flashes before your eyes.

Entire aeons are lived in those first few months when you feel inseparable from the world itself, with nothing to do but watch it passing by.

At first, time is only felt vicariously, as something that happens to other people. You get used to living in the moment, because there's nowhere else to go. But soon enough, life begins to move, and you learn to move with it. And you take it for granted that you're a different person every year,
Upgraded with a different body...a different future. You run around so fast, the world around you seems to stand still. Until a summer vacation can stretch on for an eternity.
You feel time moving forward, learning its rhythm, but now and then it skips a beat, as if your birthday arrives one day earlier every year.

We should consider the idea that youth is not actually wasted on the young. That their dramas are no more grand than they should be. That their emotions make perfect sense, once you adjust for inflation. For someone going through adolescence, life feels epic and tragic simply because it is: every kink in your day could easily warp the arc of your story. Because each year is worth a little less than the last. And with each birthday we circle back, and cross the same point around the sun. We wish each other many happy returns.

But soon you feel the circle begin to tighten, and you realize i ~ The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows

Opia. So much can be said in a glance. Such ambiguous intensity, both invasive and vulnerable - glittering black, bottomless and opaque. The eye is a keyhole, through which the world pours in and a world spills out. And for a few seconds, you can peek through into a vault, that contains everything they are. But whether the eyes are the windows of the soul or the doors of perception, it doesn't matter: you're still standing on the outside of the house. Eye contact isn't really contact at all. It's only ever a glance, a near miss, that you can only feel as it slips past you.

There's so much we keep in the back room. We offer up a sample of who we are, of what we think people want us to be. But so rarely do we stop to look inside, and let our eyes adjust, and see what's really there. Because you too are peering out from behind your own door. You put yourself out there, trying to decide how much of the world to let in. It's all too easy for others to size you up, and carry on their way. They can see you more clearly than you ever could. And yours is the only vault you can't see into, that you can't size up in an instant.

So we're all just exchanging glances, trying to tell each other who we are, trying to catch a glimpse of ourselves, feeling around in the darkness. ~ The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows

You were born with your head in the clouds,
your future wide open,
feeling almost weightless. Almost.

Kudoclasm.

You had dreams even before you had memories:
a cloud of fantasies and ambitions
of secret plans and hidden potential,
visions of who you are,
and what your life will be.

They keep your spirits high,
floating somewhere above your life,
where the world looks faintly hypothetical,
almost translucent.

But every time you reach for the sky
and come away with nothing,
you start to wonder what's holding them up.
"Surely it would have happened by now?!"

You feel time starting to slip,
pulling you back down to earth.
even as you tell yourself,
don't look down.

You don't have the luxury of floating through life,
because you may not have the time.
The future is already rushing toward you,
and it's not as far away as you think.

It feels like your life is flashing before your eyes,
but it's actually just the opposite:
you're thinking forward, to everything you still haven't done,
the places you had intended to visit,
the life goals you'd eventually get around to,
some day in the future.

You start dropping your delusions one by one,
like tossing ballast overboard.
And soon the fog lifts,
and everything becomes clear -
right until the moment you ~ The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows

What happens when you get to the age of 60 is that you have no more doubts. I know why I'm here on this planet. I know what I need to do. I know what is a distraction and what isn't. ~ John Zorn

The original of morals lies with the thought that 'the community is more valuable than the individual' (Menschliches 2.1.89 ~ John Carroll

One of yoga's great gifts to making is the discovery of the link that exists between energy, breath, and mind. As you change one, you also change the other two. If you excite one, the other two become excited and, conversely, if you calm one, the other two respond by becoming calm also. ~ John Novak

TV tends to look for the living equivalents of squeaky-clean Kens and Barbies, but with my dial I'm more like Ken's dirty old uncle. ~ John C. McGinley

Where do all the labyrinths of error in the world come from [the objector will continue], if not from the fact that when men follow their own minds they land in vanity and lies? So ~ John Calvin

A man can live three days without water; 40 days without food. But only five minutes without hope. ~ John Maxwell

I said nothing - I hadn't known Marya, and anyway, "listening quietly" was my general social strategy ~ John Green

If people knew how badly animals were treated in today's factory farms, if people knew how completely confined and immobilized these creatures are for their entire lives, if people knew how severe and unrelenting is the cruelty these animals are forced to endure, there would be change. If people knew. But too many of us choose to look the other way, to keep the veil in place, to remain unconscious and caught in the cultural trance. That way we are more comfortable. That way is convenient. That way we don' t have to risk too much. This is how we keep ourselves asleep. ~ John Robbins

Disgust was an organ in Hunt's gut. The more he thought about it, the more it churned. ~ John Hart

A soul disengaged from the world is a heavenly one; and then are we ready for heaven when our heart is there before us. ~ John Newton

Publicity images often use sculptures or paintings to lend allure or authority to their own message. Framed oil paintings often hang in shop windows as part of their display.
Any work of art 'quoted' by publicity serves two purposes. Art is a sign of affluence; it belongs to the good life; it is part of the furnishing which the world gives to the rich and the beautiful.
But a work of art also suggests a cultural authority, a form of dignity, even of wisdom, which is superior to any vulgar material interest; an oil painting belongs to the cultural heritage; it is a reminder of what it means to be a cultivated European. And so the quoted work of art (and this is why it is so useful to publicity) says two almost contradictory things at the same time: it denotes wealth and spirituality: it implies that the purchase being proposed is both a luxury and a cultural value. Publicity has in fact understood the tradition of the oil painting more thoroughly than most art historians. It has grasped the implications of the relationship between the work of art and its spectator-owner and with these it tries to persuade and flatter the spectator-buyer.
The continuity, however, between oil painting and publicity goes far deeper than the 'quoting' of specific paintings. Publicity relies to a very large extent on the language of oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the same things. (P. 129) ~ John Berger

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it.
[Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012] ~ John Green

And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us
you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair."
Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away. ~ Rick Yancey

Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. ~ John F. Kennedy

I was thinking about how part of your self can be in a place while at the same time the most important parts are in different place, a place that can't be accessed via your senses. ~ John Green

...there are times when silence is a poem. ~ John Fowles

I catch you without your ahstrux nohtrum again, I'm turning you in."
Qhuinn cursed. "Yeah, and then I'll get fired. Which means V'll Donald trump my ass with a dagger. You're welcome. ~ J.R. Ward

Lissa Treiman is an artist who submitted a guest strip to me back in 2008 and whose work I've followed since. She works in animation. When I first mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in writing a series but not drawing it, she got in touch. ~ John Allison

Life's not fair but not always to your disadvantage. ~ John F. Kennedy

Got through it without fluffing, that's the main thing any actor can hope for. ~ John Leeson

I've been through this fame thing before, when the band was big in '80, '81. ~ John Lurie

America's mission is to join the most ancient civilizations with the most modern. John Augustus Roeblin ~ H.W. Brands

A robust internal auditing program shows its presence both at the beginning and end of continual improvement projects. In the beginning, internal audits identify opportunities for improvement, at the end, internal audits provide a mechanism for monitoring the implemented improvement in order to sustain its benefits for the long term. ~ John Novak

If each of your time steps is one week long, you are not modeling the stock price terribly well over a one-week time period, because you are saying that there are only two possible outcomes. ~ John Hull

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life. ~ John Cage

Solitude is sometimes best society. ~ John Milton

The centre of the soul is God; and, when the soul has attained to Him according to the whole capacity of its being, which is the strength and virtue of the soul, it will have reached the last and the deep centre of the soul, which will be when with all its powers it loves and understands and enjoys God. ~ John Of The Cross

God is not worshiped where He is not treasured and enjoyed. ~ John Piper

Consider who and what you are; who the Spirit is that is grieved, what he has done for you, what he comes to your soul about, what he has already done in you; and be ashamed. Among those who walk with God, there is no greater motive and incentive unto universal holiness, and the preserving of their hearts and spirits in all purity and cleanness than this: That the blessed Spirit, who has undertaken to dwell in them, is continually considering what they give entertainment in their hearts unto, and rejoices when his temple is kept undefiled. ~ John Owen

We never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think think that we are invincible because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestation. ~ John Green