#t

After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames. But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life. But I know a secret. We are the Phoenix. ↗

— Courtney Cole

#inspirational #rebirth #death

Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken. ↗

— Alan Sillitoe

#life-lessons #reflection #working-class #life

Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you. ↗

— Iain Banks

#life

You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me. ↗

— Scott Adams

#influential #life

I like these people swarming on the sidewalks, wedged into a little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs, cold lands, and the sea streaming like a wet wash. I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere. ↗

— Albert Camus

#society #life

In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#individual #world #life

If all you can do is a bad thing, well at least do it with your style! ↗

— Toba Beta

#style #life

صارت الحياة صمتا ، وذويت عودا جافا ↗

— بهاء طاهر

#stories #life

However hard he tried, he could never manage to make himself visible to human eyes and not because he can't, since for him nothing is impossible, it's simply that he wouldn't know what face to wear when introducing himself to the beings he supposedly created and who probably wouldn't recognize him anyway. There are those who say we're very fortunate that god chooses not to appear before us, because compared with the shock we would get were such a thing to happen, our fear of death would be mere child's play. Besides, all the many things that have been said about god and about death are nothing but stories, and this is just another one. ↗

— José Saramago

#death #god #life #death

It is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts. ↗

— Teresa of Ávila

#meditation #mind #prayer #life