Lightness Quotes

My method of equitation consists in distribution of weight by the height of the neck bent at the poll and not at the withers ; propulsion by means of the hocks being brought under the body; and lightness by the loosening of the lower jaw. When we know this, we know everything, and we know^ nothing. We know everything, because these principles are of universal application ; and we know nothing, because they have to be applied practically. ~ Anonymous

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. ~ Steve Martin

For me it's a dedication to your real interests. It's an ability to be open-minded. Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success. The great artists have been open-minded, even though they may seem, like Picasso, to be very directed, you can be directed and open-minded at the same time. I think you have to be really intensely serious about your work, but not so serious that you can't see the lightness that may also involve your life. You have to have that lightness too. You have to not be so heavy-handed and so ostentatious. It's very important not to be. ~ Martha Stewart

Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write. ~ Milan Kundera

Now come," he said. "Does your Alex love you back, or is he a hopeless idiot?"
"He loves me," she said quietly. "But I'm afraid he'll stop after we marry. He'll change his mind. He'll - "
"He'll love you more. Trust me."
"Really?" She was far too somber.
"Really." He had no words to make her smile, and so Gareth tweaked her nose.
And she giggled.
It had been a long time since he'd laughed. But despite all those years, he still remembered how. What he'd
forgotten was the lightness of his soul when he did so. The moment was perfect. ~ Courtney Milan

This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope. ~ Ayn Rand

And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to music, riding my bicycle, I catch myself feeling, in a way that's as old as I am but suddenly seems unfamiliar, light. I have felt so heavy for so long. At first I felt odd- as if I shouldn't be feeling this lightness, that familiar little catch of pleasure in the heart which is inexplicable, though a lovely passage of notes or the splendidly turned petal of a tulip has triggered it. It's my buoyancy, part of what keeps me alive: happy, suddenly with the concomitant experience of a sonata and the motion of the shadows of leaves. I have the desire to be filled with sunlight, to soak my skin in as much of it as I can drink up, after the long interior darkness of this past season, the indoor vigil, in this harshest and darkest of winters, outside and in. ~ Mark Doty

ANGELO

From thee, even from thy virtue!
What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live!
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.

-- Measure for Measure, II, ii ~ William Shakespeare

I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power ~ Maeve Binchy

Sometimes immense things, like war and death and aging, are best seen from the corner of the eye and written of only obliquely, with tremendous lightness. ~ Lauren Groff

Everything we choose in life for its lightness soon reveals its unbearable weight. ~ Richard Serra

He walked out with the inner lightness of an author who has delivered. He wore a green tweed with flap pockets, cast into the river at Rosnaree, began his heart attack, and entered the Afterlife just after his fly was taken. ~ Niall Williams

...man is as much a parasite on the cow as the tapeworm is on man: We have sucked their udders like leeches. "Man the cow parasite" is probably how non-man defines man in his zoology books ~ Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. ~ Shauna Niequist

How am I doing so far?" she asked, forcing a cheerful lightness into her voice.
"You're doing very well," Nick's lazy voice mocked. "I'm half convinced that I'm invisible. ~ Judith McNaught

In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days. ~ Adalbert De Vogue

In the beginning, when Twaslitri (the Divine Artificer) came to the creation of woman he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after pro-found meditation, he did as follows: he took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sun-beams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldnesss of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakravaka; and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man.
(Written by scholars of the Vedic Age) ~ F.W. Bain

At this point we must remind ourselves that the idea that the world is made up of weightless atoms surprises us because we have experienced the weight of things. Similarly, we could not admire the lightness of language if we had not also learned to admire language endowed with weight. ~ Italo Calvino

There is too much singing and dancing, such lightness as loosens the restraints of virtue,' she complained, her white curls quivering. 'When I was young we held to the courtly ways, but nowadays the world is running all to ruin. ~ Lisa Klein

It was amusing, in such lightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to speak for the Princess, so unfortunately unable again to leave home; and that Mrs Verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a beautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality and humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had grown up that he couldn't bear, with the height of his standards and the tone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept by him, the irritation and depression to which promiscuous visiting, even at pompous houses, had been found to expose him. ~ Henry James

If you go on a mission to preach the gospel with lightness and frivolity in your hearts, looking for this and that, and to learn what is in the world, and not having your minds riveted - yes, I may say riveted - on the cross of Christ, you will go and return in vain ... Let your minds be centered on your missions, and labor earnestly to bring souls to Christ. ~ Brigham Young

The older I get, the more I think lightness of touch is an incredibly difficult thing to do. ~ Peter Capaldi

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Solitude

Solitude is internal peace in silence
Peace that exists in the lightness of air
It is the flagrant devotion to the oneness of self

Breathing out and breathing in
Interrupts the quiet murmur of heartbeats
Silence is imposed upon
By the faint alternating rhythms
Of breath and heartbeats

Closed eyes
Absorb the darkness of one's chrysalis
The self in solitude allows the soul
To slip into spirit ~ Isabella George

It was as if these depths, constantly bridged over by a structure that was firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had, all the while, not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn't dare express, uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. ~ Henry James

We must choose our personal viewpoint. We can embrace a sense of weighty heaviness that comes from knowing that our fate is one of deterioration and death, and our suffering is interminable. Alternatively, we can choose to believe in the unbearable lightness of our being and embrace a world of high-minded thoughts and ideals. The decisions we make are significant regardless if we only have one life to live. We weave our life story out of the choices that we make when confronted with the inevitable opportunities to experience love and friendship and heartache and suffering. During our life, we encounter goodness and evilness, and hope and despair. We must decide whether we accept reality. Alternatively, do we seek to escape the pain that comes from acknowledging the paucity of human existence? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza lives with Tomas, but her love requires mobilization of all her strength, and suddenly she can't go on, she longs to retreat down below, to where she came from. And I ask myself: What is happening with her? And this is the answer I find: She is overcome by vertigo. But what is vertigo? I look for a definition and I say: "A heady, insuperable longing to fall." But immediately I correct myself, I sharpen the definition: Vertigo is "the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down. Vertigo is one of the keys to understanding Tereza ~ Milan Kundera

The journey of the development of the ability of transmutation, is quite the journey to be on! First you awaken to the darkness that is in you, then you learn to accept it, then you learn to marry it with your light, and then, finally, you learn how to harness the dark energy through your bright energy in order to transmutate any darkness into brightness, into light and lightness. This is Soul Alchemy and sometimes it is thrust upon an individual and other times it is sought after by an individual. In any case, it is not an easy journey to surmount. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Afflictions are light when compared with what we really deserve. They are light when compared with the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. But perhaps their real lightness is best seen by comparing them with the weight of glory which is awaiting us. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Her fingers flew, her fiddle was an entire orchestra, and every note beautifully brought into being struck a chord of satisfaction within her. She wondered at the unfamiliar lightness in her chest and realised she was laughing.
So great was her focus, it took her a while to register the strange expression that crept to Brocker's face as he listened, finger tapping the armrest of his chair. His eyes were fixed behind Fire and to the right, in the direction of Archer's back doorway. Fire comprehended that someone must be standing in Archer's entrance, someone Brocker watched with startled eyes.
And then everything happened at once. Fire recognised the mind in the doorway; she spun around, fiddle and bow screeching apart; she stared at Prince Brigan leaning against the door frame. ~ Kristin Cashore

I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you. ~ Anais Nin

And wasn't this what she'd been after--this lightness that came galloping through, grabbing you by the waist and hauling you along with it? How could you not surrender yourself to it, even if you knew you'd end up sitting bruised in the dirt? She supposed there must be another way to experience that breathless rush of being alive--something inward, perhaps?--but she didn't know what it was or how to get there on her own. ~ Sharon Guskin

In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. ~ Milan Kundera

Gravity is the root of lightness; stillness the ruler of movement. (Mueller, op. cit., p. 69.) ~ Erich Fromm

Simplify and add lightness ~ Colin Chapman

History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow. ~ Milan Kundera

He could feel himself gliding down like the sail of a weightless craft, forever plunging into the great beyond below where mermaids sing and summon their lovers home, further down into the depths of some complacent serenity, further down where thoughts float away and never return and the lightness is so grand that there is no other worldly place imaginable, for there is no world left to be
considered. There is only the soul, free from the prison of the body, and it is released to travel
another millennium through time, carrying with it the progress and industry gathered from the
mind previously occupied. ~ Matthew Chase Stroud

How odd it is, that the dead weigh more than the living. You would think it would be the opposite, but it isn't. I think it is because souls give bodies lightness and air. When the soul leaves, the body has nothing left and is desperate to return to the earth. That's why it's so heavy. ~ Rene Denfeld

Yet, tragically, many today still eat at the table of demons, serving their own lustful appetites, and then attempt to come to the Lord's table and feast with the righteous. This leads only to spiritual sickness and death because these deceived ones do not discern the true Bread of God.
These sickly sheep have become so spiritually weak and diseased by sin that they cannot eat strong meat. Instead, the prefer to nibble at the husks of ear-tickling teachings. They gravitate toward lightness and entertainment rather than the genuine Word. Their spiritual appetites have become dull as a result of eating too much junk food. ~ David Wilkerson

Don't know if you noticed," I say with false lightness, "but it's raining cows and chickens out there." Her snort buffets my skin. "Cows and chickens?" "This here is farm country, Libs," I drawl "Ain't no cats and dogs filling these skies. ~ Kristen Callihan

I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom - one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything. ~ Alexander Gordon Smith

Mhysa!" a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. "Mhysa! Mhysa!"

Dany looked at Missandei. "What are they shouting?"

"It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means 'Mother.'"

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. "Mhysa!" they called. "Mhysa! MHYSA!" They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. "Maela," some called her, while others cried "Aelalla" or "Qathei" or "Tato," but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother. ~ George R R Martin

Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that - whatever the outcome - you have traveled a noble path. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

There is something of the freshness of mind, of the lightness of spirit in Linne which for centuries has been linked in people's minds with the mountains of Sweden and Swedish joy in nature. ~ Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it? ~ Milan Kundera

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. ~ Willa Cather

My dad showed me that it's my responsibility to provide my own joy, and that every moment is a chance to find lightness. ~ Whitney Cummings

Listen to your beliefs, think about how you learned them, and realize that they are not genetic, nor are they the "only way." You are free to acquire new perspectives, to absorb new ideas, and to question everything you were taught to believe. As your mind opens to exploration and change, you'll feel a new lightness and more joy. ~ Charlotte Sophia Kasl

The light within us can always identify our mind's darkness ~ Munia Khan

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. ~ Milan Kundera

Esme skips on ahead. Jumping from one foot to the other, as if she can see markings on the ground he can't. She is constantly jumping and skipping and twirling with the lightness of falling snow, looking up at him bright with questions, tugging on his hand, dashing off with all the speed her body is capable of and then skipping on the spot up ahead as if consecrating it for his arrival. It is so easy to make her happy that it seems like cheating at times. ~ Glenn Haybittle

Evie," she murmured, reaching down to pull the covers up to her chest. "That's what my father and my friends call me."
"Are we finally ready for first names?" A teasing smile lurked in the corners of his lips. "Sebastian," he said softly.
Evie reached out slowly, as if he were a wild animal that might bolt if startled, and her fingers laced through his front locks with careful lightness. Brushing aside the swath of stray hair, she said in a low voice, "We're truly married now."
"Yes. God help you." He inclined his head, enjoying the stroke of her fingers in his hair. ~ Lisa Kleypas

She merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell. ~ Milan Kundera

But Talin was scared of him. She had told him that to his face, and the sharp knife of it was still buried in his heart. The man wasn't sure he wanted to chance another rejection. Keeping the animal's instincts in check, he finally stepped out of the shadows. "Do you want to be held, Talin?" Her damp eyes widened at the blunt question, then she nodded in a little jerking motion. Something in him quieted, waiting. "Then come here." A pause during which the entire forest seemed to freeze, the night creatures aware of the leopard's tense watchfulness.

"Oh, God, Clay." Suddenly her arms were wrapped around his back, her cheek pressed against the white cotton of his T-shirt.

Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his own arms around her feminine warmth, blindingly aware of every inch of her pressed into him, every spot of wetness soaking through his T-shirt. She was so small, so damn soft, her humanity apparent in the delicacy of her skin, the lightness of her bones. The Psy might be fragile in comparison to changelings, but they had powers of the mind to compensate. Humans had the same fragility but none of the psychic abilities. A wave of protectiveness washed over him. "Shh, Tally." He used the nickname because, at this moment, he knew her. She had always had a heart too big for her body, a heart that felt such pain for others while ignoring its own. "I'll find your lost one."

She shook her head against him. "It's too late. Three bodies already. ~ Nalini Singh

Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death. ~ Milan Kundera

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. ~ Milan Kundera

Mondays are for baklava, which she learned to make by watching her parents. Her mother said that a baklava-maker should have sensitive, supple hands, so she was in charge of opening and unpeeling the paper-thin layers of dough and placing them in a stack in the tray. Her father was in charge of pastry-brushing each layer of dough with a coat of drawn butter. It was systematic yet graceful: her mother carefully unpeeling each layer and placing them in the tray where Sirine's father painted them. It was important to move quickly so that the unbuttered layers didn't dry out and start to fall apart. This was one of the ways that Sirine learned how her parents loved each other- their concerted movements like a dance; they swam together through the round arcs of her mother's arms and her father's tender strokes. Sirine was proud when they let her paint a layer, prouder when she was able to pick up one of the translucent sheets and transport it to the tray- light as raw silk, fragile as a veil.
On Tuesday morning, however, Sirine has overslept. She's late to work and won't have enough time to finish preparing the baklava before starting breakfast. She could skip a day of the desserts and serve the customers ice cream and figs or coconut cookies and butter cake from the Iranian Shusha Bakery two doors down. But the baklava is important- it cheers the students up. They close their eyes when they bite into its crackling layers, all lightness and scent of orange blossoms.
And ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself. ~ Milan Kundera

We can combat existential anguish – the unbearable lightness of our being – in a variety of ways. We can choose to work, play, destroy, or create. We can allow a variety of cultural factors or other people to define who we are, or we can create a self-definition. We decide what to monitor in the environment. We regulate how much attention we pay to nature, other people, or the self. We can watch and comment upon current cultural events and worldly happenings or withdraw and ignore the external world. We can drink alcohol, dabble with recreational drugs, play videogames, or watch television, films, and sporting events. We can travel, go on nature walks, camp, fish, and hunt, climb mountains, or take whitewater-rafting trips. We can build, paint, sing, create music, write poetry, or read and write books. We can cook, barbeque, eat fine cuisine at restaurants or go on fasts. We can attend church services, worship and pray, or chose to embrace agnosticism or atheism. We can belong to charitable organizations or political parties. We can actively or passively support or oppose social and ecological causes. We can share time with family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances or live alone and eschew social intermixing. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Mozart didn't need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Beauty and the Illiterate"

Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
tomorrow foreign.

But, when it darkened well and out came the priest's hand over
the little garden of the dead, She

Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night - the blowing
rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns -
at sea's entry, wakeful

Otherly beauty!

Only the waves' words half-guessed or in a rustle, and others
resembling the dead's that startle in the cypress, strange
zodiacs that lit up her magnetic moon-turned head.
And one

Unbelievable cleanliness allowed, to great depth in her, the real
landscape to be seen,

Where, near the river, the dark ones fought against the Angel,
exactly showing how she's born, Beauty

Or what we otherwise call tear.

And long as her thinking lasted, you could feel it overflow the
glowing sight bitterly in the eyes and the huge, like an
ancient prostitute's, cheekbones

Stretched to the extreme points of the Large Dog and of the Virgin.

"Far from the pestilential city I dreamed of her deserted plac ~ Odysseus Elytis

My all-time favourite classic use of ricotta is in gnudi: fluffy, cheesy dumplings of almost ethereal, feathery lightness. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.
The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express. ~ Milan Kundera

Breathe and Be Reborn
Into the Lightness
Of your Heart and Inner Truths.
Speak ...
in the Silence of Dreams,
Knowing the words
Bring the peace into your Soul.
Radiant the Love that is your True Self
and Again ...
Be Reborn. ~ Jennifer Hillman

It is day after day. It is week after week. It is month after month. It is year after year. It is only time going and going. There is no joy. There is no lightness of heart. It is only the passing of days. I am young and alone. ~ Mary MacLane

I believe that with all things in life, there is a constant need to let go of the idea of "trying hard", there's a heaviness in trying hard to get something, have something or be something. As long as people comply with the idea of "trying hard" they will constantly remain in a place of heaviness. The opposite of this is the state of allowing, of setting out the intentions of what you wish, putting in the required action and not self-sabotaging yourself by "trying hard" or expecting results to unfold in a particular way. Anything that's worth something to you in life such as love, abundance, freedom, peace is in a continuous state of flow. A state of lightness is the only way to allow yourself to go with the flow of things. Heaviness only makes you become a rocky solid object at the bottom of the stream. You can see the flow of things in the life of others who embody the lightness, but you yourself become unmovable in your state of heaviness, as if blocking the flow from reaching you. Will you let yourself move with the flow of abundance or sink at the bottom with the heaviness of your scarcity mindset? ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

She smelled like England, of soft rain and sun-kissed meadows. And she felt like the best kind of heaven. He wanted to wrap himself around, bury himself within her, and stay there for all of his days. He hadn't had a drop to drink in three years, but he was intoxicated now, bubbling with a lightness he'd never thought to feel again. ~ Julia Quinn

I always try so hard to find a male doll and shoot a male doll, and it always kind of implodes. Whenever I use men, they're so scary and so dark, and I can never find this sort of lightness or this place between doll and human that I find with female dolls. ~ Laurie Simmons

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you're optimizing. ~ Fred Brooks

It is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences ... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty. ~ Milan Kundera

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The ~ Charles Dickens

The fire was followed by a period of grieving and then by an incredible lightness, freedom, and mobility. ~ Martin Puryear

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city.

At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most ~ Alexandre Dumas

I find a certain value in lightness. ~ Daniel Abraham

He, too, had dreamed dreams. Folk are usually content to draw from such visions portents which sometimes prove true, since they reveal the sleeper's secrets; but he surmised that these games the mind plays when left to itself can indicate to us chiefly the way in which the soul perceives things. Accordingly, he sought to enumerate the qualities of substance as seen in dream: lightness, impalpability, incoherence, total liberty with regard to time; then, the mobility of forms which allows each person in this state to be several people, and the several to reduce themselves to one; last, the sense of something akin to Platonic reminiscence, but also the almost insupportable feeling of necessity. Such phantom categories strongly resemble what Hermetists clam to know of existence beyond the grave, as if the world of death were only continuing for the soul the awesome world of night. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Can it be chat modesty may more betray
Our sense than woman's lightness? ~ William Shakespeare

In the name of God, with the help of God I liked to clarify little bit regarding those Ayahs in the beginning of some Swras in the holy Quran which they are 29 Swras, these Ayas are as follows:
{الم ,Swra Al-Baqara, Al-Imran, Al- Ankabwt, Al-Rom, Lukman, Al-Sajda} {المص ,Swra Al-Aaraf}
{الر ,Swra Younis, Hud, Yousif, Ibrahim, Al-Hijr} {الر, Swra Al- Raied} {کهیعص, Swra Maryam} {طه, Swra Taha} {طسم, Swra Al-Shuaraa, Al-Qasas} {,طس Swra Al-Naml} {یس, Swra Yasin} {ص Swra Sad} {حم, Swra Ghafir, Fwsilat,Al- Zakhraf, Al-Dwkhan, Al-Jathya, Al-Ahqaf} { حمعسق, Swra Shwra} { ق, Swra Qaf} { ن, Swra Al-Qalam} Dear brothers and sisters if these Ayahs are clarified they will take years. With the assistance of God I would clarify one of the clarifications the letters of the Arabic alphabetical Abjadyah are 28 letters 14 letters are brightness {النورانیة} and 14 letters are darkness {الظلمانیة} the brightness letters are:
{ ا ح ر س ص ط ع ق ك ل م ن ‌ه ي} the rest of letters are darkness the clarification of these Ayahs In most Swras the God says these Ayahs as oaths and endless sacred God refer to these letters saying these are the holy Quran these are the miracles of Quran , the holy Quran is the light and guidance in the holy Quran lightness is above darkness go and discover the Quran more than the three fourths 3/4 of Quran consist on brightness letters. These Ayahs are the key of supplication, if someone attained the key of God's door, easily will get close to God's thro ~ Kamaran Ihsan Salih

The good life is that which succeeds in existing for the moment, without reference to past or future, without condemnation or selection, in a state of absolute lightness, and in the finished conviction that there is no difference therefore between the instant and eternity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Your place is with me," Jem said. "It always will be."
"What do you mean?"
He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. "I mean," he said, "Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"
Tessa sat bolt upright. "Jem!"
They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, "That was not a no, I suppose, though
neither was it a yes."
"You can't mean it."
"I do mean it."
"You can't - I'm not a Shadowhunter. They'll expel you from the Clave - "
He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. "You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably a
Downworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law.
They will have to take your - our - individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent our
engagement."
"You are serious." Her mouth was dry. "Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrifice
yourself in that way for me."
"Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you. ~ Cassandra Clare

I'm mesmerized by lipstick prints on coffee cups.

By the lines of lips against white pottery. By the color chosen by the woman who sat and sipped and lived life. By the mark she leaves behind. Some people read tea leaves and others can tell your future through the lines on your palm. I think I'd like to read lipstick marks on coffee mugs.

To learn how to differentiate yearning from satiation. To know the curve of a deep-rooted joy or the line of bottomless grief. To be able to say, this deep blue red you chose and how firmly you planted your lips, this speaks of love on the horizon. But, darling, you must be sure to stand in your own truth. That barely-there nude that circles the entire rim? You are exploding into lightness and possibilities beyond what you currently know. The way the gloss only shows when the light hits it and the coffee has sloshed all over the saucer? people need to take the time to see you whole but my god, you're glorious and messy and wonderful and free. The deep purple bruise almost etched in a single spot and most of the cup left unconsumed? Oh love. Let me hold the depth of your ache. It is true. He's not coming back. I know you already know this, but do you also know this is not the end? Love. This is not the end.

I imagine that I can know entire stories by these marks on discarded mugs. Imagine that I know something intimate and true of the woman who left them. That I could take those mugs home one day and an entire ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

I felt this lightness settling on me, which was new. It's not closure, because I will live with Matt's death and the pain of it every day and the grief will stay with me. I just felt that I was carrying it differently. It was a place inside me that was more contained, it wasn't all of me. It wasn't like raw, open grief. It was almost like the scab had grown over. Occasionally you pick at it, or it might come off when you're not expecting it and you start bleeding again. ~ Leigh Sales

The sky was wide and inviting, and the grass was cool and sweetly refreshing under my bare feet as I walked across the undulating field towards the river. It was a short walk, only a mile or so, but I did not hurry it, letting my soul soak up the glorious sensation of freedom and lightness. ~ Susanna Kearsley

It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more. It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to lightness of heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful, without being eminently and directly useful. ~ Charles Dickens

Bands of Apollonian lightness and Dionysian darkness fill my inscrutable chamber. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, and ecstasy. Manchurian opposites of good and evil tug at me. My lifelong state of confusion manufactured a gray fog that engulfs me. Multilayers of misgiving line my impenetrable soul. Secret tunnels, coagulation's of light and dense waves of incomprehensible silence, wend through me. I am constantly surprised to see slivers of myself. At times, I am utterly devoid of ambition. At other times, radical surges of energy convulse within me. Guilt, pleasure, anger, joy, impulsivity, watchfulness, sensual longings, and exhibitionist tendencies tumble within. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I stood there feeling the lightness of my bones, knowing now this was not only lack of sleep that had transformed my bones into feathers, but my body's recognition that soon I would be leaving this place I had inhabited for one year, this place made entirely of grief. ~ Anne Spollen

I went on a book tour immediately after 9/11. I was due to leave the following Wednesday, so I just did. It was an amazing thing, because planes hadn't been flying very many days, and I got on this plane and went to San Francisco, and the minute that plane lifted above the clouds, I felt this incredible sense of lightness. ~ Joan Didion

To grasp the truth is a delicate gesture, like taking a hand in greeting, a lightness of touch is needed if one is to feel the presence of another being. ~ Susan Griffin

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. ~ Milan Kundera

When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness ~ Nhat Hanh

Because we were orbiting the earth faster than earth spins on its axis, we went around the earth 16 times a day, an earth day, which meant 16 periods of lightness and 16 periods of darkness in 24 hours. Every so often you'd look towards the earth, and often you could see lightness and darkness together, and dawn and sunset were spectacular. ~ Helen Sharman

Liquor and loss were a desperate combination but particularly for my family, where the precipice between darkness and lightness was mired in the uncertainty of which side held salvation. ~ Angela Amman

People don't walk around thinking of themselves as bad people. You're part of the environment that you grow up in, and there can be decency in that. I always try to find a little glimmer of that, in anything that I do, because you can find places where there's humor or lightness in something that's deep and profound, and that tends to resonate more and make people more human. As an actor and performer, I think it resonates more with the audience when you do have the payoff. ~ Jimmy Smits

Lightness of movement is the cardinal demand one has to make on a dancer. ~ Frank Thiess

I was startled to realize that in spite of everything, the last few months had had one area of lightness: not having to bear the tremendous weight of the responsibility neurosurgery demanded - and part of me wanted to be excused from picking up the yoke again. Neurosurgery is really hard work, and no one would have faulted me for not going back. (People often ask if it is a calling, and my answer is always yes. You can't see it as a job, because if it's a job, it's one of the worst jobs there is.) A couple of my professors actively discouraged the idea: "Shouldn't you be spending time with your family?" ("Shouldn't you?" I wondered. I was making the decision to do this work because this work, to me, was a sacred thing.) ~ Paul Kalanithi

Hugely enjoyable and insightfulGosling has produced the perfect combination of rigorous research and lightness of prose to create a book that will transform every reader into a super snooper. ~ Richard Wiseman

How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there's no need to let anyone make it heavy for us ~ Elena Ferrante

who have a lightness of touch, an informality based on amusement at their own ineptitude, bring the simplest of gifts to others - the releasing power of laughter."31 ~ Robert C. Dykstra

Bread plays favorites.
From the earliest times, it acts as a social marker, sifting the poor from the wealthy, the cereal from the chaff.
The exceptional from the mediocre.
Wheat becomes more acceptable than rye; farmers talk of losing their 'rye teeth' as their economic status improves. Barley is for the most destitute, the coarse grain grinding down molars until the nerves are exposed. Breads with the added richness of eggs and milk and butter become the luxuries of princes. Only paupers eat dark bread adulterated with peas and left to sour, or purchase horse-bread instead of man-bread, often baked with the floor sweepings, because it costs a third less than the cheapest whole-meal loaves. When brown bread makes it to the tables of the prosperous, it is as trenchers- plates- stacked high with fish and meat and vegetables and soaked with gravy. The trenchers are then thrown outside, where the dogs and beggars fight over them. Crusts are chipped off the rolls of the rich, both to make it easier to chew and to aid in digestion. Peasants must work all the more to eat, even in the act of eating itself, jaws exhausted from biting through thick crusts and heavy crumb. There is no lightness for them. No whiteness at all.
And it is the whiteness every man wants. Pure, white flour. Only white bread blooms when baked, opening to the heat like a rose. Only a king should be allowed such beauty, because he has been blessed by his God. So wouldn't he be surprised- no, ~ Christa Parrish

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. ~ Milan Kundera