Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
Christopher HitchensRead
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3,372 quotes
Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.
There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.
One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.
Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way.
Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me." -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12
Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.
As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth".
All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: "We worked hard at it.
Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.
A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.
Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.
I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
Many of us are returning from a long journey during which we were forced to search for things that were of no interest to us. Now we realize that they were false. But this return cannot be made without pain, because we have been away for a long time and feel that we are strangers in out own land. It will take some time to find the friends who also left, and the places where our roots and treasures lie. But this will happen.
She closed one eye and looked at me and said, "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere." It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.
We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair
I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.
I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.
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