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1 " What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine. "
― Friedrich Nietzsche , The Gay Science
2 " In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. "
― Friedrich Nietzsche
3 " In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of " world history" - yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die. "
4 " Subhuti, someone might fill innumerable worlds with the seven treasures and give all away in gifts of alms, but if any good man or any good woman awakens the thought of Enlightenment and takes even only four lines from this Discourse, reciting, using, receiving, retaining and spreading them abroad and explaining them for the benefit of others, it will be far more meritorious. Now in what manner may he explain them to others? By detachment from appearances-abiding in Real Truth. -So I tell you-Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.When Buddha finished this Discourse the venerable Subhuti, together with the bhikshus, bhikshunis, lay-brothers and sisters, and the whole realms of Gods, Men and Titans, were filled with joy by His teaching, and, taking it sincerely to heart they went their ways. "
― , The Diamond Sutra
5 " I pray for those who feel friendless and who feel that they are all by themselves in this wide world. May God show them, through one His of innumerable ways, that not only does He know them but also loves them dearly. "
6 " Even though we keep talking about counting our blessings, looking at brighter side of things, being positive and so on, do we really practice them when things fall apart at the seams? That is the time we crib and grumble the most. “Why me? Why this? Why that?” and so on are the questions uppermost in our minds. That is the time to remember God’s innumerable mercies and Blessings showered on us in the past. That is the time to practice what you have been saying so many times. Rekindle your faith and Hold on to Him. Remember that there are still things to be thankful for. "
7 " The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them. "
― Sigmund Freud
8 " Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict. So I take my past experiences... and try to regret nothing. -Drizzt Do'urden "
― , Sea of Swords (Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness, #4; Legend of Drizzt, #13)
9 " The average adult has had sex innumerable times more than they have formed an opinion of their own. "
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana , The Use and Misuse of Children
10 " A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain. "
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
11 " So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which movesTo that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." Thanatopsis "
12 " Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some " thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only " strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant— which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes " a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will [ This conception of " freedom of the will" ( alias, autonomy) does not involve any belief in what Nietzsche called " the superstition of free will" in section 345 ( alias, the exemption of human actions from an otherwise universal determinism).] that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence. "
13 " And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with God. "
14 " the only unfailing guide I’ve ever found through the innumerable blind alleys of my life as a writer, man, husband, father, citizen, steward, or believer, is the love burning in my heart. for me, prayer is about one thing: making contact with that love. though it burns in there like a candle flame, hot, bright, beautiful, love’s flame is so fragile… keeping one’s love burning, and living in accord with that burning: this, to me, is prayer. "
― David James Duncan , God Laughs & Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right
15 " Collegiate life presents a student with innumerable opportunities to engender personal growth by responding to a dynamic social, athletic, and academic environment. Students instigate personal development by making calculated and rash personal decisions pertaining to what activities to pursue and by measuring their string of reactions to new experiences. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
16 " You are charming. Your charm, just like your ability to live happily and be successful is beyond a limit. Day after day, innumerable people all over the world are always in search of social acceptance and validation for their beauty.Stop looking for people’s validation of your beauty! Stop trying to make people accept you; stop trying to look for someone to tell you how charming your eyes are. Stop searching for someone to be grateful for your love and beautiful smile. Stop looking for someone to admire you for your strong mind when you are faced with troubles in life.Don’t give people’s validation more power than it has earned. The can only give you a reflection of your connection with gravity. That’s it. Your purpose in life cannot be measured by a scale, the reason for your existence, your beauty; talent cannot be measured by this scale. Why don’t you just take the note of the number and then live your life freely? Because life is beautiful. You are Beautiful! "
17 " For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs. "
― Saul Bellow , Herzog
18 " A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. "
― Jorge Luis Borges
19 " As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections. "
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón , The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
20 " In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding - at a distance, through the medium of photography - other people's pain. "
― Susan Sontag , Regarding the Pain of Others