#life

Choice, and all its attendant energy, is a characteristic of youth. It is before one chooses that one feels desire and longing without fulfillment, which gives an edge to any artistic endeavor. Galway Kinnell recently said in an interview that a young poet has so many choices but an old poet must simply endure his chosen life. ↗

— Mary Ruefle

#poetry #youth #life

How fragile we are, between the few good moments. ↗

— Jane Hirshfield

#people #life

Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life. ↗

— William Blake

#light #life

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. And while some books, like steps, are left behind us by the very help which they yield us, and serve only our childhood, or early life, some others go with us in mute fidelity to the end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our sober hours, and a solace for our sickness or sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that has no life of its own gives so much life to you. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#life

إن الأمور لا تتحسن مع الوقت ، بل نحن الذي نعتاد سُوأَها ↗

— عز الدين شكرى فشير

#life

We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense. ↗

— John Dufresne

#fiction #novel #story #storytelling #life

People do not get married planning to divorce. Divorce is the result of a lack of preparation for marriage and the failure to learn the skills of working together as teammates in an intimate relationship. ↗

— Gary Chapman

#failure-relationship #marriage #marriage-life #marriage-preparation #relationships-advice

Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf ’s tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world. ↗

— Terry Tempest Williams

#fear #peter-the-wolf #safety #survival #survive

Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own. ↗

— Patti Digh

#inclusion #mindfulness #open-mindedness #welcome #life

The difference between those who adapted and those who didn't, Gorton said, was a willingness to totally commit. ↗

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

#fitness #motivational #politics #life