Reverence For Life Quotes

To be in thousands of states of mind simultaneously as you perform simple physical tasks gives you a reverence for life. Each of these outer manifestations of life is God. ~ Frederick Lenz

Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power ... that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving ... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life. ~ Gary Zukav

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. ~ Albert Schweitzer

You have to recognize that God isn't something outside of you - a cosmic bellboy to whom you pray in order to get this or that if you do the right things. Those kinds of understandings are all ego talk. Everybody - you, me, Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler - we all came from the same Source. Then we took on these egos and began to practice all kinds of things based in not having reverence for life, whereas that which is God has reverence for all life. All excuses are nothing more than misalignments with God. ~ Wayne Dyer

When you teach kindness to animals, you teach reverence for life in general. The youngster who is taught concern for animals will grow up being kind to his fellow man. It follows, too, that he will not become callous to widespread suffering in any form." Bernard Beck ~ Nana Awere Damoah

Through life, I want to walk gently. I want to treat all of life – the earth and its people – with reverence. I want to remove my shoes in the presence of holy ground. As much as possible, I want to walk in peace.

I want to walk lightly, even joyfully, through whatever days I am given. I want to laugh easily. I want to step carefully in and out of people's lives and relationships. I don't want to tread any heavier than necessary.

And throughout life, I think I would like to walk with more humility and less anger, more love and less fear. I want to walk confidently, but without arrogance. I want to walk in deep appreciation. I want to be genuinely thankful for life's extravagant, yet simple, gifts – a star-splattered night sky or a hot drink on an ice-cold day.

If life is a journey, then how I make that journey is important. How I walk through life. ~ Steve Goodier

Reverence for life brings us into a spiritual relation with the world which is independent of all knowledge of the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer

He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much.
The sound of their daughters' high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. "Papa, Papa, we want a new game!"
Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude.
Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a new
reason for celebration. ~ Victoria Lynne

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life. ~ Desmond Tutu

Reverence for life, veneratio vitae, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Late upon the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset ... there flashed upon my mind, unforseen and unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life'. ~ Albert Schweitzer

What we call love is in its essence reverence for life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

We renew our hearts and minds by exhibiting veneration for all living creatures and by unveiling a spirit of reverence and awe. Witnessing the magnificence of nature and displaying empathy for humankind is what inspires all artists. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself. ~ Norman Cousins

Love, reverence, and adoration, are multifaceted emotions. Similar to a painting by an artist, how we respond to a beautiful woman, nature, and the world that we encounter reveals the spectator and not life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Every religious tradition on which we draw has a reverence for life. We are a part of an intricate web of life. Every tradition on which we draw teaches that the ultimate expression of our spirituality is our action. Deep spirituality leads to action in the world. A deep reverence for life, love of nature's complex beauty and sense of intimate connection with the cosmos leads inevitably to a commitment to work for environmental and social justice. ~ Peter Morales

The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis of our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right? ~ Terry Tempest Williams

NVC is interested in learning that is motivated by reverence for life, by a desire to learn skills, to contribute better to our own well-being and the well-being of others. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Spaying is a compromise in terms of reverence for life, but perhaps a necessary one in a society which kills millions of dogs and cats a year in "animal shelters". ~ James Marcus

We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabulary of science we desire. We want a language of that different yield. A yield rich as the harvests of the earth, a yield that returns us to our own sacredness, to a self-love and resort that will carry out to others. ~ Linda Hogan

Having pets in the house helps everyone have a reverence for life. ~ Bernie Siegel

There is also a dimension of patience which links it to a special reverence for life. Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance. Put another way, too much anxious opening of the oven door and the cake falls instead of rising. So it is with us. If we are always selfishly taking our temperature to see if we are happy, we will not be. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now. ~ Amory Lovins

Ethics is nothing other than reverence for life because God is within every other human being you come in contact with either physically, or emotionally. Living with reverence for life is attuning goodliness, which is a state of godliness. ~ Vishwas Chavan

Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself. ~ Seamus Heaney

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The Jain religion in India teaches that because all life is essentially interrelated and interconnected, all living beings should be considered sacred and be respected. This belief forms the basis of the doctrine of ahimsa, which has been translated into English variously as "reverence for life," "nonviolence," and "dynamic compassion." ~ Nathaniel Altman

The first mindfulness training: reverence for life Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing, compassion, and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, nondiscrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

We can make these three dynamic words - "reverence for life" - a part of our lives by becoming aware that God is the source of all life and that we are one with life. "The good person," said Schweitzer, "is the friend of all living things." ~ Wilferd Peterson

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality. ~ Albert Schweitzer

My most firmly held value is what Albert Schweitzer termed 'reverence for life.' I take this seriously; many would say that because I extend it to nonhumans, I take it too far. ~ Victoria Moran

When one has reverence for life, one will never do anything to harm, hinder, or destroy life. Instead one bends every effort to help life to fulfill its highest destiny. One strives to maintain, enhance, and assist life to make the most of itself. ~ Wilferd Peterson

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought. ~ Albert Schweitzer

What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life - all life. ~ Roger Tory Peterson

Wilderness itself is the basis of all our civilization. I wonder if we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness the right to live on? ~ Margaret Murie

Vegetarianism should not be anything moral or religious. It is a question of aesthetics: one's sensitivity, one's respect, one's reverence for life. ~ Rajneesh

You only become funny when you have a complete reverence for life. ~ Frederick Lenz

Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive. ~ Albert Schweitzer

I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept.

1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too.

2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.

3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth.

4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).

5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness ~ Jack Kornfield

We must control the tendencies within our being that are destructive, when we want to slam somebody else, hurt them, injure them, or push them out of the way. A reverence for life needs to be developed, in which all things are sacred. ~ Frederick Lenz

But he finally saw
how pain caused
one of two things:
A reverence for life.
Or killing.
Both grew from the same seed. ~ Cynthia Rylant

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for life ... does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful ... the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many ... It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. ~ Albert Schweitzer

There's actually a sort of comfort in the belief that things can only get worse. It gives one an appreciation for the here-and-now, knowing that each and every moment may be as good as its ever going to get. Anyways, I can't imagine living too happy a life - so much to lose. It only figures that the more miserable your life is, the easier it is to lose it. And, when you can lose it at any moment, any time un-enjoyed must be time well spent.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) ~ Mort W. Lumsden

My love for you spans over the lines of my past, present, and future. You are what I love remembering, what I love experiencing, and what I love looking forward to. ~ Steve Maraboli

He and his wife loved each other and brought each other daily pain. Everything else he was doing in his life, even his longing for Lalitha, amounted to little more than flight from circumstance. He and Patty couldn't live together and couldn't imagine living apart. Each time he thought they'd reached the unbearable breaking point, it turned out that there was still further they could go without breaking. ~ Jonathan Franzen

When tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr Frog, or me, or both, in miniature. From the outset she seemed to know what she wanted, and I realised I could have no inkling of the paths she would choose to follow. But if I watch her life unfold carefully enough, perhaps I will see clear signposts pointing to who or what she will become.
Because when I look backwards, ransacking my own past for clues with the clarity that only hindsight can bring, several defining moments do stand out. Moments charged with significance; snapshots of myself which, if I were to join the dots together, lead me unswervingly to where I stand today. ~ Catherine Sanderson

Self-pity is a weakness. I don't blame them or anybody for not having a normal life. Life isn't easy for anyone. ~ Greg Aunapu

Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things. ~ William Golding

At some point in my life, before I was gone, I wanted to make an album, even if it was for no reason other than posterity. ~ Danny Aiello

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived.

It looked like a woman's tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn't find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn't make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, "that was a good time then, ~ Annie Dillard

Mappo frowned. 'I have not heard that phrase before. Lost Elementals?'
'Scholars tend to acknowledge but four, generally: water, fire, earth and air; yet others exist. ( ... ) Life, death, dark, light, shadow ... possibly, but even that seems a truncated selection. What of, for example, time? Past, present, future? What of desire, and deed? Sound, silence? Or are the latter two but minor aspects of air? Does time belong to light? Or is it but a point somewhere between light and dark, yet distinct from shadow? What of faith and denial? Can you now understand, Mappo, the potential complexity of relationships?'
'Assuming they exist at all, beyond the notion of concepts.'
'Granted. Yet, maybe concepts are all that's needed, if the purpose of the elements is to give shape and meaning to all that surrounds us on the outside, and all that guides us from within. ~ Steven Erikson

The business of being happy requires making a conscious choice. People think being happy will just happen to them someday, if only they do this or that right. But it doesn't - you have to choose it. You choose happiness, you don't wait for it to choose you. ~ Bethenny Frankel

For a good ten minutes or so we stand there with the flashlight burning the grave with light. The whole time, I'm trying to guess where and exactly how he died and, more to the point, realizing that poor old Milla's been without him for sixty-years. I can tell. No other man has entered her life. Not the way her Jimmy did. She's been waiting sixty years for Jimmy to come back. And now he has. ~ Markus Zusak

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others ...
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ... ~ Jon Krakauer

If you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you loose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
"That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon-I don't want it! But I am not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, 'O lovely!' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity."
"It's nothing to do with eternity," said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. "All you have to do to see life as a whole is to see it as mortal. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?"
"Ah! your talk, your damned philosophy!"
"Talk? It's not talk. It's not reason. It's hand's touch. I touch the wholeness, I hold it. Which is moonlight, which is Takver? How shall I fear death? When I hold it, when I hold in my hands the light-"
"Don't be propertarian," Takver muttered.
"Dear heart, don't cry."
"I'm not crying. You are. Those are your tears."
"I'm cold. The moonlight's cold."
"Lie down."
A great shiver went through his body as she took him in her arms.
"I'm afraid, Tak ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

You're beautiful but you don't know it. You're my sister and I love you but I sometimes think to myself that you don't love me, consider what is important to my soul to be significant to yours. You can't see me. I am invisible to you. We don't share anything anymore like we used to do in childhood. The only things we have in common are our parents, a brother. We're not children anymore. It hurts (the pain). It hurts (this long distance relationship but most of all the separation). For me it hurts. For you, it is only your life that matters. Well, for me, it is going to take a miracle for this to go away. The ingredient required for this miracle is only one thing and it's love. The compulsion of love. The idea of love. The journey towards love. I've realized this. If you live in poverty, that is, if your soul lives in poverty you're forever walking away from it with a hunger (in your soul) but when you have love there is no more Hiroshimas, Nagasakis, Sarajevos, and loneliness. There is only light and with light comes acceptance. There is only breath,. ~ Abigail George

It's more for me as with going into a forest: if you sit quietly for a long time, the life around you emerges. As the world grows ever more clamorous, my hunger for silence steepens. I unplug the landline. ~ Jane Hirshfield

My heart stopped beating, I know it did. Hearts do that sometimes, for just a beat or two. Then they start up again. But they never regain those missed beats, and nothing is ever the same afterwards. Life proceeds to a different cadence, and never again as harmonious as before ~ Ann Rinaldi

Accepting a religion, any, is a lot like someone in love. It doesn't matter what the beloved does or says, he or she will get a pass ... Forever. It's easier that way. It's too difficult to accept fault or to admit contradictions or falsehoods. Someone who is religious is in love, and there is no talking them out of it, regardless of what others would take as silly notions or irrational thinking. I no longer try. Life is brief, despite what those longing for an afterlife might really need to believe. Peace and acceptance is something, however, I'll always back, no matter what vehicle it rides in on. ~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge

The farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog. ~ Jane Bowles

Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms? ... As long as she is subject to man's yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her! ~ Flora Tristan

How could I actually be changing anything, even in myself? My legacy is built into me; I was born to not know, to wonder and let the crispness of my wondering dissolve as I age. I have no choice. I am not on a crusade. My life is happening to me and I am vainly insisting I am the captain. "I am making these brave choices because, at heart, I am a brave person." But I am so flimsy. I am ruined for days at the mention of a name! I bend my back at the first reminder of a hurt feeling. How could I steer anything? ~ Phil Elverum

Service rendered as a gift or love-offering to Life: work that is engaged in, not for self or for profit, but as an act of love and service, these bring the doer a harvest of blessings ... When we serve and when we give, we open ourselves to receive life's richest blessings, its greatest prizes, and its most enduring lessons. ~ Henry Thomas Hamblin

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us. ~ Neil Bartlett

Partying at this time of ecological meltdown is not affirming of reality, but an abdication from it. It is a place of false refuge especially so when there is no evidence of an acknowledgement of affirming life as it is, for this would require of these people a heartbrokeness. ~ Stephen Jenkinson

The things in your life don't have to be expensive for you to thoroughly enjoy them. ~ Retta

And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.
Such was Momo's talent for listening. ~ Michael Ende

To learn from the past is good, but to live there is a waste. To plan for the future is good, but to live there is a waste. You are happiest and most productive in life when you are living in the present. ~ Kenneth H. Blanchard

Life is full of joys and sorrows, much of it our own making. Sadly, the West has voted time and time again for bigger government, more inflation, higher taxes and excessive regulation - all policies that have kept us from Adam Smith's vision of an opulent society. ~ Mark Skousen

My father lived life to the fullest, even though it was cut short at a young age in 1962. He was known for his intelligence, wit, wisdom, a wonderful sense of humour, a great personality, and a genuine goodwill towards all. ~ Ajay Mehta

Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else: glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday. ~ J.K. Rowling

To life lived fully: to laughter, to have loved and lost, to be remembered for the good fight. ~ Tim Heaton

For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections. ~ Margaret Mead

Every day was a struggle. Forget making plans for life - we were just trying to make it to next week. ~ Taylor Swift

Let us be grateful and express gratitude for all those beauties and magic of our life. ~ Debasish Mridha

July 13, 1954 was the most tragic day of my life. I had lost my beloved Frida forever. To late now I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida. ~ Diego Rivera

Things change all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn't do you that much good, apparently. ~ Tom Perrotta

As hard as it may seem, move forward one step at a time, day by day, knowing that there will be valuable lessons learned and strength gained in each trial. There is a certain peace to be found in knowing that there is a master plan for your life and that your value, purpose, and destiny are not determined by what happens to you but by how you respond. ~ Nick Vujicic

One prays for life , life means free choice and freedom is mystery . If one knew the truth how could there be freedom ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

I'd like to run away, to flee from what I know, from what is mine, from what I love. I want to set off, not for some impossible Indies or for the great islands that lie far to the south of all other lands, but for anywhere, be it village or desert, that has the virtue of not being here. What I want is not to see these faces, this daily round of days. I want a rest from, to be other than, my habitual pretending. I want to feel the approach of sleep as if it were a promise of life, not rest. A hut by the sea, even a cave on a rugged mountain ledge, would be enough. Unfortunately, my will alone cannot give me that.

Slavery is the only law of life, there is no other, because this law must be obeyed; there is no possible rebellion against it or refuge from it. Some are born slaves, some become slaves, some have slavery thrust upon them. The cowardly love we all have of freedom -which if it were given to us we would all repudiate as being too new and strange –is the irrefutable proof of how our slavery weighs upon us. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,––to be prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow. ~ Charles Dickens

I set my face toward the sun again, and I think about my old life - the one I feel as though I've abandoned somehow. It hurts to think of it that way. And even though I know it wasn't perfect, I look back now, and all I see is perfection. Every soft whisper, every spoken word, every gentle touch - it's all perfect. Time won't let me see it otherwise. They're all just perfect memories - perfect, untouchable moments that came and went so softly that they almost feel as if they were always just a dream. ~ Laura Miller

Matthias was in the dark. And it wasn't the kind of dark that came with a room that didn't have any lights on or when you were walking around at night in the country. This was not even the kind you got when you shut your eyes and wrapped your head in a blanket.

This was the one that seeped in through your skin and filled the spaces between your molecules, the one that polluted your flesh into a permanent state of rotting, the one that wiped clean your past and your future, suspending you in a choking, adhesive solution of sorrow and despair.

He was not alone in this horrible prison.

As he writhed in the weightless void, others did the same, their voices mixing with his own as pleas escaped from cracked lips and the endless begging for mercy rose and fell like the breathing of a great beast. From time to time, he was chosen for special attention, clawed monsters with fanged maws latching on, yanking and pulling. The wounds they imparted always healed as quickly as they were wrought, providing an ever-fresh canvas for their masticating artwork.

Time had no meaning; nor did age. And he knew he was never getting out.

This was his due.

This was his eternal payment for the way he had lived his life: He had earned this place in Hell through his sins upon the earth, and yet still, he argued the unfairness to the others he was trapped with. Tough debate, though. There was little on the good side to support his bid for f ~ J.R. Ward

I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world ... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value. ~ G.H. Hardy

You shouldn't do science just to improve wealth - do science for the sake of human culture and
knowledge.
There must be some purpose in life that is higher than just surviving. ~ Gerhard

It is when darkness prevails that I sit by the window to look past all those electricity-free houses, smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine - of our incomplete story. ~ Refaat Alareer

Patiently persevere in the face of hardship hoping for a good outcome because you never know how many dead hearts you will bring to life in the process. No hardship lasts forever. There is always an end. ~ Babar Ahmad

The No. 1 thing the people I have spent time with in my life have done for fun is playing music. ~ Ezra Miller

Nothing should be worshipped [sic] that has form or is individuated. The universal Divine Life is alone to be worshipped. There is no colorless pantheism in this concept; for the God of each man is one with the universal God: the Conqueror obtains the Universe, not by being absorbed and obliterated by it, but by transcending the limitations of his individual consciousness and partaking of the universal Divine Consciousness. As an individual he loses nothing but his imperfections, but he gains the All, the "Origin and the Perfection." And this is Seership, which is not "prophecy," "second sight" or sense-perception on any plane of consciousness, but is Direct Cognition of Reality. ~ James Morgan Pryse

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether. ~ Lionel Shriver

I want to start at the top; but, not at the top, top. But, to the top where I can live comfortably; even if it is paycheck to paycheck and I can have a minimum of $1/month that will be the lowest I will ever go.
I am not needy nor am I desperate; but to have a good life I must be able to stand for what I want, need and require in my life. ~ Temitope Owosela