Quotes on Ifs

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.

As they used to say 'What if they gave a war and nobody came?' How worthwhile if they declared a day of peace and everybody came.

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.

Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, Can a person lay a new foundation every day? The old man replied, If you work hard, you can lay a new foundation every moment. Abba Pimen said, To throw yourself before God, not to measure your progress, to leave behind all self-will; these are the instruments for the work of the soul. The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.

When you have abandoned all past and future, it is as if you have come alive. You are here, mindful...the nature of all types of consciousness reveals itself.

If you do base your life on how many touchdowns you score, how many championships you win, then when you have a setback, then when you have an injury, you're not playing, or something goes wrong, your self-worth goes down.

I have no religion,’ says Borneau, ‘but I respect the religion of others. Religion is sacred.’ Why this privilege, this immunity?... A believer creates God in his own image; if he is ugly, his God will be morally ugly. Why should moral ugliness be respectable?

She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness

If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.

Equality, absolutely, that's what defines us. It's what makes us great. If it doesn't sit well with your religion, let your God sort it out in the end, but that's us. We're equal

I'd like to get something together - like a Handel, Bach, Muddy waters, flamenco type of thing. If I could get that sound, I'd be happy

If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.

Had I faltered we would have neither the success nor the international reputation we have. Yet when a woman is strong she is strident. If a man is strong, he's a good guy.

What i’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!

Forgive: if you never know forgiveness, _x000D_ You'll never know the blessings that God gives.

After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required.

If you want someone to be ignored then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town. It doesn't matter how great you were, it'll always take an unfunny drunk with climbing skills to make people notice you.

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.