As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
Mark HelprinRead
[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
Interpretation
Books bring joy and a sense of timelessness.
This quote reflects the joy that literature can bring to an individual, portraying a person who finds happiness and a sense of escape in the world of books. It illustrates the transformative power of reading, where one can lose track of time and indulge in the joy it brings, even leading to carefree expressions of happiness like dancing.
In practice
This quote can be used in an essay about the importance of reading for personal happiness.
As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.
their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.
You’ll join me sooner than you know in a place with . . . no illusions, where the truth is the only architecture, the only color, the only sound--where that which we sense merely on occasion, and which takes us up and gives us the rare and beautiful glimpses of the things we truly love, flows in deep rivers and tumbles about like clouds in the sky.
Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.
The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.
To forget oneself is to be happy.
Peace is one of the most precious gifts God has promised His children. I know, because for many years my life was not peaceful, and I was miserable.
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.
Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.
Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.
I'm actually happier with my body now . . . because the body I have now is the body I've worked for. I have a better relationship with it. From a purely aesthetic point of view, my body was better when I was 22, 23. But I didn't enjoy it. I was too busy comparing it to everyone else's.
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