Quotes on Ifs

So it may well be believed that when I found him taking a complete holiday, with a vast supply of books at command, he had the air of indulging in a literary debauch, if the term may be applied to so honorable an occupation.

I knew that the world around you is only uninteresting if you can't see what is really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic place you'll ever encounter because it is the only place where you recognise how many secrets and mysteries there are in people's lives

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed

One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.

Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.

Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people had children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering.

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven.

If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.

Time is not measured by the years that you live But by the deeds that you do and the joy that you give- And each day as it comes brings a chance to each one To love to the fullest, leaving nothing undone That would brighten the life or lighten the load Of some weary traveler lost on Life's Road- So what does it matter how long we may live If as long as we live we unselfishly give.

Whether we eat, sleep, work, play, whatever we do life contains dissatisfaction, pain. If we enjoy pleasure, we are afraid to lose it; we strive for more and more pleasure or try to contain it. If we suffer pain we want to escape it. We experience dissatisfaction all the time. All activities contain dissatisfaction or pain, continuously.

Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses.

Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a Love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days.

If you can't do something smart, do something right.

Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering.

We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said." Love is the only rational act.

if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.

No, my heart will not yet despair. Gandalf fell and has returned and is with us. We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.

Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?