Browsing Quotes With Tag: stoicism (9)
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I am convinced that in the long run no one can hurt another without the other’s consent; that is, hurt him in a deeply significant, personal, internal sense. This is because we always have the power to choose a response to what someone else does to us. This may be the reason why failure to forgive someone else is a greater sin than that which he has done to us. That is, it causes more damage to the unforgiving one – a damage in the mind and heart – than that caused by what the other person may do to him externally.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:59 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Oh, to confront night, storms, hunger,
Ridicule, accident, rebuffs as the trees and animals do.Speaker: Walt WhitmanPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:07 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 7:44 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
They’d lied to me and betrayed me, leaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and I didn’t like or respect or admire them any more, but still I loved them. I had no choice. I understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 7:26 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I don’t know what scares me more,” she declared, “the madness that smashes people down, or their ability to endure it.”
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I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:07 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There’s a kind of luck that’s not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that’s not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:55 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I was numb, in those first years after the escape: shell-shocked by the disasters that warred in my life. My heart moved through deep and silent water. No-one, and nothing, could really hurt me. No-one, and nothing, could make me very happy. I was tough, which is probably the saddest thing you can say about a man.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:45 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
When people talk about you now you know they are talking about a secondary character in their story who represents you. They are talking about an image they create for you. You know that it has nothing to do with you. Nut if you agree, if you believe what they say, then their story becomes a part of your story. If you take it personally, it modifies your story. If you don’t take it personally, the opinions of others do not affect you the way they used to, and you have more patience with people.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:33 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Where am I?” said Billy Pilgrim.
“Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now – three hundred million miles from Earth, bound for a time warp which will get us to Tralfamadore in hours rather than centuries.”
“How – how did I get here?”
“It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”Speaker: Kurt VonnegutPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:02 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!