The Living Museum Quotes

So next time you go to a museum, keep your eyes open; you never know what you will see. ~ Isaac Du Toit

One of the pitfalls about writing about illness is that it is very easy to imagine people with cancer as either these wise-beyond-their-years creatures or these sad-eyed tragic people. And the truth is, people living with cancer are very much like people who are not living with cancer. They're every bit as funny and complex and diverse as anyone else. ~ John Green

The story of the Zen Master whose only response was always "Is that so?" shows the good that comes through inner nonresistance to events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. The story of the man whose comment was invariably a laconic "Maybe" illustrates the wisdom of nonjudgment, and the story of the ring points to the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads to nonattachment. Nonresistance, nonjudgement, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living. ~ Eckhart Tolle

There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself. ~ John Lennon

I matched him glare for glare and refused to back down. I'd learnt that much, working with the guys we recruited for protection work. Forget your average heavy ... we used the elite. Ex-commandos used to living behind enemy lines on nothing more than fresh air and dung beetles, and who could zero in on a target using mouse farts three miles away. ~ Mina Carter

The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic, which have no effect at close quarters, but must be looked at from a distance in order to discern their beauty. So that to obtain something we have desired is to find out that it is worthless; we are always living in expectation of better things, while, at the same time, we often repent and long for things that belong to the past. We accept the present as something that is only temporary, and regard it only as a means to accomplish our aim. So that most people will find if they look back when their life is at an end, that they have lived their lifelong ad interim, and they will be surprised to find that something they allowed to pass by unnoticed and unenjoyed was just their life - that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. And so it may be said of man in general that, befooled by hope, he dances into the arms of death. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Eleven men and women, exhausted, battered, and armed with captured weapons, against fifty battle-armored foes desperate to kill them. Every one of those eleven knew exactly what their odds of living through the next three minutes were, but it didn't matter. They were all that stood between six hundred civilians and cold-blooded murder, and Alicia's green eyes were hard as she watched the gaps being punched through the western wall.
"Make it count, people," she said, almost conversationally. ~ David Weber

I had interest in acting. I started as a drama major in college. I got to school and said, "What am I going to do with this?" But I didn't know anybody in the business, and it seemed like - I don't know. I had a teacher who said "Less than 1 percent of you will ever make a living being an actor." That was how we opened the semester. ~ Greg Kinnear

I understood that the attachment to myself and my image ... was actually taking me away from my self, away from this wonderful opportunity to just sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body, just feel the soft, sultry heat of June. The density of my attachment was making it impossible for me to have a truly satisfying experience of life in my body just as it was in the moment. When under the sway of this obsession, my mind's attention was always in the fantasized future, or the idealized or devalued past - never present to the reality of the moment. ~ Stephen Cope

We are all living history, and it's hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing's certain, though: if we throw it away, it's gone. ~ Marilyn Johnson

All things grow, flourish, die, and re-grow. Life and death are continuous and fluid. Like the Sun and the Moon which die and are reborn, so do the seasons and all living things. ~ Brandi L. Bates

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. ~ Herman Melville

I may never fly - in the bird sort of way. But I do have wings. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The drunken man is a living corpse. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read . The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy , and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again. ~ James A. Baldwin

The love for a child is more an unconditional sort of love ... Although some parents are really narcissistic. In general, I think there is an expectation that love will be unconditional, but obviously it's not - even after living with someone for years. ~ Kim Gordon

Religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right ... but i am about the process that takes you to the living answer ... it will change you from the inside. there are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. ~ Wm. Paul Young

I love living in California and being able to go to the beach or go to the woods. ~ Tracy Chapman

I love you without end. Don't you dare think for a second that that love is gone. Don't you dare mourn for me. Miss me. Every day, just as I will miss you. Then get on with living. Do it for me. Because I can't. I will be there in every starry night, in ever whisper of breeze against your skin when you jog, I'm in every package of Starbursts, smiling down at you when you eat the pink ones. ~ Kendall Ryan

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in. ~ Julia Cameron

In the end, everything will be OK. If you're at a point in your life where everything is not OK, don't worry. That just means it's not the end. ~ Clyde Lee Dennis

Thou shalt not, it is said, make unto thee any graven image of God. The same commandment should apply when God is taken to mean the living part of every human being, the part that cannot be grasped. It is a sin that, however much it is committed against us, we almost continually commit ourselves
Except when we love. ~ Max Frisch

Hell is to be contemplated strictly as a matter which concerns me alone. As part of the spiritual life it belongs behind the 'closed door' of my own room. From the standpoint of living faith, I cannot fundamentally believe in anyone's damnation but my own; as far as my neighbor is concerned, the light of resurrection can never be so obscured that I would be allowed or obliged to stop hoping for him. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Nana and Pops were waiting in the living room. They had their recliners pushed in front of the couch, the only place available for Cole and me to sit. The moment we were in position, the interrogation began.
Pops: Plans for the future?
Groaning, I dropped my head in my hands. He'd kicked things off with Justin the exact same way. Guaranteed, he'd end the same way.
Cole: College, law enforcement.
Nana: Oh, I like him better than that other boy already.
Pops: Good, that's good. Now finish this sentence for me. When a girl says no, she means...
Yep. Exactly the same.
Cole: No. And that's that. I don't push for more.
Nana: Another excellent answer. But here's an even tougher sentence for you to finish. Premarital sex is...
I should have let the zombies have me.
Cole: Up to the couple. What happens between them is no one else's business. Sorry, but not even yours.
Both Pops ans Nana blustered over that for a minute, but they soon calmed down. I, of course, blushed the most horrifying shade of lobster. (That was just a guess.) However, I found Cole's answer exceptional.
Pops: That's fair enough, I guess. So how do you feel about drinking and driving?
Cole: I think it's stupid, that's one thing you'll never have to worry about with me and Ali. I never drink, and if she does, I won't take advantage of her. I'd bring her home. I'll always look out for her safety, you have my word.
"I won't be drinking, ~ Gena Showalter

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth ... and the ambitions they had ... and the things they suffered ... and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away. ~ Thornton Wilder

When I talk about the city, I talk about a city that elevates people, which is the strength of New York. We always had the ability to do that. We had the services to do that: good schools, living-wage jobs. We're moving away from that toward a two-tiered system: a small group of very wealthy people and the rest of the city, poor and working poor. ~ Sal Albanese

Evie says, "It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed."
I write:
i know girls who say that about their dildos. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

An Anchorite was a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church. A living human sacrifice, in a way. ~ David Mitchell

(on teaching writing)
So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, 'How do I make a living from this?' It's a fair enough question and one I always try to answer well - but it saddens me that it so often overshadows the more relevant questions of 'why am I writing' and 'what am I saying' and 'how do I keep it honest. ~ Celine Kiernan

A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. That is why creation is so manifold. So it is with us human beings. Some are born dynamic and restless; others placid and contemplative…One man's temperament is full throated with laughter; another's tinkles with the sad chimes of gentle melancholy. Our physiques are different, and that simple difference oftentimes drives us into conflicting fulfillment of our natures, to action or to thought, to passion or to denial, to conquest or to submission. There is here no fatalism of endowment. We can change and prune and shape the hedges of our being, but we must rebel against the sharp shears being wielded by other hands, cutting off the living branches of our spirits in order to make our personalities adornments for their dwellings. ~ Joshua Loth Liebman

Some read biographies of famous Christians to try to short-cut themselves into a deeper walk with the Lord and successful ministry. They think: "If I just copy some of their techniques, beliefs, and quotes, I will have their success." Such thinking, though, creates men who trust in the past work of other believers, living out of their zeal instead of tapping into the actual power of God which these men had. True men of God are only signposts to point the way. Their sign should point to heaven, to the Lord himself. ~ Greg Gordon

The expression terminal, when the doctor first pronounced it, had struck Meershank with a comic bounce, this after a lifetime of pursuing puns for a living. His scavenger self immediately pictured a ghostly airline terminal in which scurrying men and women trotted briskly to and fro in hospital gowns. ~ Carol Shields

Look: each moment is a cradle and a casket: may all life and all death seem strange to you. ~ Marcel Schwob

Where once the student was taught that the unexamined life was not worth living, he is now taught that the profitably lived life is not worth examining. ~ Benjamin Barber

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. ~ Nicholas Kaufmann