#life

If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind. ↗

— Loren Eiseley

#meaning #meaning-of-life #imagination

Life Without Work To do nothing In this day and age, When so much pointless work Is being produced, Could almost be considered an achievement. It all compares most unfavorably With my own imaginary Body of work. ↗

— John Tottenham

#work #age

... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#ageing #life #age

I think that one of the benefits of optimism and idealism is that they lead you into things you would never have tried if you'd let yourself imagine how hard it was going to turn out to be. ↗

— Roméo Dallaire

#optimism #imagination

My life exists in an imagined reality. ↗

— Mandy Patinkin

#imagination #life #reality #imagination

The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it. "What do you want?' it repeated. He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not. 'Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you. Why?' 'I wanted to meet you,' he said, without looking around. 'I want to live for ever.' His voice cracked as he said it. He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life. The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several long seconds to recognise it as laughter. 'This is not life,' said the voice. It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#life #vampires #death

And finally this question The mystery of whose story it will be. Of who draws the curtain. Who is it that chooses our steps in the dance? Who drives us mad? Lashes us with whips and crowning us with victory when we survive the impossible. Who is it... that does all these things? Who honors those we love, for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us, and at the same time sings that we'll never die? Who teaches us what's real and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we'll die to defend? Who chains us and who holds the the key that can set us free? It's you... You have all the weapons you need... Now fight! ↗

— Zack Snyder

#art

The interior life is often stupid. Its egoism blinds it and deafens it; its imagination spins out ignorant tales, fascinated. It fancies that the western wind blows on the Self, and leaves fall at the feet of the Self for a reason, and people are watching. A mind risks real ignorance for the sometimes paltry prize of an imagination enriched. The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world—if only from time to time. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#imagination #interior-life #self #imagination

Make your lives a masterpiece, you only get one canvas. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#art-of-life #good-advice #inspirational #inspirational-quotes #life

I would die for you, but I won’t live for you. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#inspirational #life #quotes #quotes-that-makes-sense #the-perks-of-being-a-wallflower