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21 " One can show one's contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one's life a poem of incoherence and absurdity. "
― Alfred Jarry , Selected Works
22 " So much of one's life was spent reading "
23 " Making money isn't hard in itself,' he complained. 'What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to. "
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón , The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
24 " Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to. "
25 " The beauty of one's life would never seize to fade away the moment hate settles in one's heart. "
26 " The circles of shame are vicious. Painful feelings of shame help cause people to be depressed and suicidal, these in turn become shameful aspects of the self. Being angry does not necessarily cause more anger, being envious does not necessarily cause more envy (though once we envy, we can also envy someone's lack of envy), but, in our culture at least, shame (and envy and self-pity) are things to be ashamed about. The two common feelings of suicide are hopelessness and powerlessness; each is shameful, and this additional experience of shame adds pain on pain. A man who despairs because he feels his prospects of having a family are hopeless also feels he will never lose the feeling of shame over being wifeless and childless. To be powerless to change one's life in ways that others can is cause to feel ashamed of one's powerlessness. "
― , Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain
27 " To have no desire is such a load of bullshit--forgive me for being so blunt. To have no passion in one's life is a cop-out for cowards. "
28 " Happiness, after all, is generally measured as reported satisfaction with one's life - a state of mind perhaps more accessible to those who are affluent, who conform to social norms, who suppress judgment in the service of faith, and who are not overly bothered by societal injustice...The real conservatism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power. Positive psychologists' tests of happiness and well-being, for example, rest heavily on measures of personal contentment with things as they are. "
― Barbara Ehrenreich , Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
29 " [She] discovered what feminism intended to be about, or at least a piece of what it promised to the generations who followed blindly in its wake. The freedom to live one's life apart from any prescribed pathway. The ability to love men and children and jobs but not lose one's self to them. The opportunity to embrace choices rather than just have them. "
30 " Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other. "
― Sheldon Vanauken , A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
31 " There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one's life might turn. And almost inevitably they popped out at one without any warning at all, leaving one with no time to consider or engage in a reasoned debate with oneself. One had to make a split second decision, and much depended upon it. Perhaps everything. "
― , At Last Comes Love (Huxtable Quintet, #3)
32 " Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. "
― Chaim Potok , The Chosen (Reuven Malther #1)
33 " There has never been a moment in one's life when one might not have stumbled upon this strange reality: What am I doing, where am I so hurriedly running, what is my objective, this whole world is a rat race and I'm going no where, with out any goal, Isn't it?. This thought comes to me very often. Alas! what to do, don't know what and where to knock the door and experience reality. No sooner that i try, I'm again fallen into the dismal depths of abyss, into the worldly affairs "
34 " Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the most unambiguous terms that this is not real Zen. To follow the Dharma involves a complete reorientation of one's life in such a way that one's activities are manifestations of, and are filled with, a deeper meaning. If it were not otherwise, and merely sitting in zazen were enough, every frog in the pond would be enlightened, as one Zen master said. Dōgen Zenji himself said that one must practice Zen with the attitude of a person trying to extinguish a fire in his hair. That is, Zen must be practiced with an attitude of single-minded urgency. "
― , How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Master Dogen's Shobogenzo
35 " Entrusting one's life is not the same as opening up one's soul. "
― Muriel Barbery , The Elegance of the Hedgehog
36 " There comes a point in one's life where the people whom we grew up admiring begin to die, leaving a great chasm in the world. This is awful enough to deal with without having anything so annoying as feelings getting in the way of personal equanimity. And then, possibly even more horribly, there comes a time in one's life when the people whom we grew up with or the people who are in our same age group begin to die. I have had the disagreeable business of having to watch colleagues only a few years my senior perish without warning, though premonition would not soften the blow. I am now realizing that I am entering this time, the dreadful gateway of existence, the one that leads to watching the ebb and flow of time, the great rote and sussuration of life and death, and being able to do nothing but welter in misery and pine over the dregs of hideous mortality. Death is an unaccountable business, one that robs the living of the peace we believe to be --perhaps mistakenly-- our birthright, one which asks the living to pay for the departed in the currency of feelings, leaving us to wallow in emotional debt. There is a loneliness about behind left behind as is there a thrill of horror for what lies beyond. The sum total of living is to sacrifice peace in favour of finding it, which makes little sense at all. I often wonder if the dead know we grieve for them, as the penury of pity only disconcerts ourselves. It is poor comfort, the business of mourning, for what is there really to mourn about excepting our own desire for reconciliation, something which no one, not even the dead, can furnish? "
37 " The true moments of one's life were sadder for the fact that they must always be synchronized with the ordinary: with rail timetables, with breaks in traffic. "
― Chris Cleave , Everyone Brave Is Forgiven
38 " Any man can grow a moustache and a beard! And this does not make him a man! What it takes to be a man is to help a needy person, stand up for the innocent, and lead one's life in the most courteous, dignified and sophisticated way possible to a man. "
39 " There are events in one's life which, no matter how remote, never fade from memory "
― Jim Corbett , The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag
40 " Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to be clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word " curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains of their own, or venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience. "