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21 " A society with a great number of prisons is a totally failed society because it has terribly failed to create a marvellous society where crime is not something widespread but an exception! "
― Mehmet Murat ildan
22 " One was watching the other day a red-tailed hawk, high in the heavens, circling effortlessly, without a beat of the wing, just for the fun of flying, just to be sustained by the air-currents. Then it was joined by another, and they were flying together for quite a while. They were marvellous creatures in that blue sky, and to hurt them in any way is a crime against heaven. Of course there is no heaven; man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly. This life has become a turmoil, a travail of endless striving. One wonders if man, a human being, will ever live on this earth peacefully. Conflict has been the way of his life - within the skin and outside the skin, in the area of the psyche and in the society which that psyche has created. "
― J. Krishnamurti , Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal
23 " Because I came to seeThat I should never have been a first-rate potter.I didn't have it in me. It's strange, isn't it, That a man should have a consuming passion To do something for which he lacks the capacity? Could a man be said to have a vocation To be a second-rate potter? To be, at best,A competent copier, possessed by the cravingTo create, when one is wholly uncreative?I don't think so. For I came to see, That I had always known, at the secret moments,That I didn't have it in me. There are occasionsWhen I am transported- a different person,Transfigured in the vision of some marvellous creation,And I feel what the man must have felt when he made it.But nothing I made ever gave me that contentment-That state of utter exhaustion and peaceWhich comes in dying to give something life... "
― T.S. Eliot
24 " -the future is a most marvellous creation. For in it lies all the mystery of raw potentiality-a boundless reservoir of all that could be-formed by the illimitable interactions of conscious human beings with their individual environments, circumstances, and conditions, and in concert with their fellow humans. "
― Stephen R. Lawhead , The Shadow Lamp (Bright Empires, #4)
25 " Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as if it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own. "
― Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray
26 " One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese, very close overhead, calling, calling, their marvellous strange cry, as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven. "
― Madeleine L'Engle , Miracle on 10th Street: And Other Christmas Writings
27 " Meditation is to find out whether the brain, with all its activities, all its experiences, can be absolutely quiet. Not forced, because the moment you force, there again is duality, the entity that says, 'I would like to have marvellous experiences, therefore I must force my brain to be quiet' - you will never do it. But if you begin to inquire, watch, observe, listen to all the movements of thought, its conditioning, its pursuits, its fears, its pleasures, watch how the brain operates, then you will see that the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet; that quietness is not sleep but is tremendously active and therefore quiet. "
― J. Krishnamurti
28 " Your life will be colourful if you just add colours to your life! It is your own decisions that will determine to have a miserable or a marvellous life! "
29 " Common SenseAnd marvellous magicShare the same bough "
― Neil Mach , The Bedevilment of Bertie Lunn
30 " [about suicide] And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queuejumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, “Excuse me, I was here first.” They don't say, “You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.” That would be a bit strong. "
― Nick Hornby , A Long Way Down
31 " Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. "
32 " Touch the stone,' said Beliah, 'and you will touch " reality" , or what the ignorant of all ages think " reality" is. That kind of truth will kill you, man. You won't see morning! I have kept you all your life from such things as remorse, terror, pity. Touch the stone, and those same angels will change you into an old poor pathetic deluded dying creature. Hubert, a nurse has to shave you, your hand shakes so much. You know that don't you? You dribble at every orifice, Hubert. You've begun to smell this past year or two...' He suddenly howled as if I had actually touched the stone,'YOU WILL BE RAVAGED IN FIRES OF GRACE!'I heard Nurse McGregor in the next ward. 'Good evening,' came her cheerful voice to the looney who had strangled his sweetheart and then buried her in his garden. 'Is it cocoa tonight, or tea, or milk?" Beliah was weeping. Outside the eaves dripped. The whole earth was drenched with the grief of Beliah. He wept inside me. I felt his marvellous tears on my face. "
33 " To see something marvellous with your own eyes - that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment ... that’s worth more than one plus one. It’s worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can’t even imagine it. "
― Alastair Reynolds , House of Suns
34 " The marvel of our Bible never shows more marvellous than at such times, when you see it in deed and in truth the Sword of the Spirit, and it cuts. "
― Amy Carmichael
35 " Look! Why want anything more marvellous than what is. "
― Diana Athill , Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter
36 " ... the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the larder... "
― Marcel Proust , Swann's Way
37 " One can easily forget his destination when walking in a marvellous path towards his destination! The attraction of the path can be much stronger than the attraction of the target! "
38 " It has been a marvellous age of invention: radio, aeroplane, electric light, the telephone, and fellatio. "
― Christopher Bram , The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes
39 " The uncertainty of the future is a great blessing for us humans! Let the road ahead of us be completely unknown for us so that we can have the marvellous joy of discovering it! "
40 " Marcia was silent a moment. Then a sort of softer gleam came into her angry eye." Tell me some more about her," she said.Adele clapped her hands." Ah, that's splendid," she said. " You're beginning to feel kinder. What we would do without our Lucia I can't imagine. I don't know what there would be to talk about." " She's ridiculous!" said Marcia relapsing a little." No, you mustn't feel that," said Adele. " You mustn't laugh at her ever. You must just richly enjoy her." " She's a snob!" said Marcia, as if this was a tremendous discovery." So am I: so are you: so are we all," said Adele. " We all run after distinguished people like--like Alf and Marcelle. The difference between you and Lucia is entirely in her favour, for you pretend you're not a snob, and she is perfectly frank and open about it. Besides, what is a duchess like you for except to give pleasure to snobs? That's your work in the world, darling; that's why you were sent here. Don't shirk it, or when you're old you will suffer agonies of remorse. And you're a snob too. You liked having seven--or was it seventy?--Royals at your dance." " Well, tell me some more about Lucia," said Marcia, rather struck by this ingenious presentation of the case." Indeed I will: I long for your conversion to Luciaphilism. Now to-day there are going to be marvellous happenings... "