#life

My first and last philosophy ... I learnt in the nursery... The things I believed then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales... They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic... Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth ... I knew the magic beanstalk before I tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#life

Richard didn't even have time to ask if I thought I'd ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, "I already have, mister. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#life

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits. ↗

— Katherine Paterson

#life

God works in mysterious ways, baby, and there is never more evidence of this than when your life is going along fairly well, actually sailing. The sensation of wind through your hair becomes, for an extremely brief time, commonplace. It is then that God lowers the cosmic boom. He will not show up; that is the kind view. The unkind view is that he sits back to watch with a high-ball and a bowl of nuts. ↗

— Suzanne Finnamore

#life #humor

The Self says ‘I AM’–as in the very grand sayings of Christ, especially in the Gospel of John, in which he says in the state of onenenss with Yahweh (which in Hebrew means ‘I AM’), I AM is the way and the truth and the life–but the ego says ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that,’ thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness. (62) ↗

— Ravi Ravindra

#ego #gospel-of-john #oneness #self #life

I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#spirituality #life

The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#life

When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims. ↗

— Yann Martel

#life

When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap. ↗

— Eckhart Tolle

#consciousness #crisis #evolution #nature #survival

Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in the realm of love that we fight our first battles – and generally lose. I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought. They managed to avoid scars, humiliations, feelings of helplessness, as well as those moments when even warriors doubt the existence of God.’’ Manuscript Found In Accra – Paulo Coelho ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#defeat #denial #doubt #god #helplessness