Quotes – Page 2 – A Pondering Mind

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

Smiles And Laughter

“Life does not come with instructions on how to live, but it does come with trees, sunsets, smiles and laughter, so enjoy your day.” ~ Debbie Shapiro, Author ~ Born: 1953

“Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.” ~Jonathan Franzen

Evil

“Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?” ~ Bret Easton Ellis, Novelist ~ Born: March 7, 1964

“Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don’t Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can’t Decide My Future” ~ Thomas A. Edison

The People Of The United States

“The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don’t understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.” ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” ~ Aldous Huxley

“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” ~Aldous Huxley

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between. ~Albert Camus

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” ~Anthony Burgess

“Invisible things are the only realities.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe

To Be

“To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” ~ George Berkeley

“Life’s like a mayonnaise soda.” ~Lou Reed

“All perception is a gamble.” ~Edmund Husserl

People Know What They Do

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” ~ Michel Foucault, Philosopher – Born: October 15, 1926 – Died: June 25, 1984

“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation.” ~Averroes

Averroes, Philosopher – Born: April 14, 1126-Died: December 10, 1198

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

The body

“The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.” ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Philosopher ~ 1908-1961

“All consciousness is consciousness of something” ~Edmund Husserl

We The People

Two People

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” ~ William James

Time is the most unknown of all unknown things. ~Aristotle

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Reading A Novel

“Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist’s head, and you invest many hours to do so.” ~ Jay McInerney

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” ~William Ralph Inge

Hard Work

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” ~ Stephen King

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” ~George Harrison

Wrong Planet

“Sometimes I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet. It’s great when I’m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here?” ~ George Harrison – Born: February 25, 1943 – Died: November 29, 2001

Being Here Now

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~Voltaire

Materials Of Knowledge

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ~ John Locke

“Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.” ~Paul Theroux

“Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.” ~Paul Auster

“Every exit is an entry somewhere else.” ~Tom Stoppard

“What worries you, masters you.” ~ John Locke

Back In Time

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” ~ Harvey Mackay

“To silence gossip, don’t repeat it.” ~ John Keats

“Life is a constant process of dying.” ~Arthur Schopenhauer

“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” ~Arthur Schopenhauer

Majority Of Men

“The majority of men… are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and… are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher – 1788-1860

Suddenly Wake Up

“Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain’t this and that at all?” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.” ~Jack Kerouac

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.” ~Baruch Spinoza

Life Is One Big Road

“Life is one big road with lots of signs,So when you riding through the ruts,Don’t you complicate your mindFlee from hate, mischief and jealousyDon’t bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality.” ~ Bob Marley

The Charming Gardeners

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~ Marcel Proust

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge. ~Carl Jung

To be is to be perceived. (Esse est percipi) ~Bishop ~George Berkeley

“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” ~Thomas A. Edison

Sunsets

“Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.” ~ John Lubbock, 1834-1913

“You know what they say about Chicago. If you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes.” ~ Ralph Kiner

The Crazy Ones

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…Continue reading “The Crazy Ones”

“To choose not to choose is still to act.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

One Day Left

“There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

“I rebel; therefore I exist.” ~Albert Camus

“The loudest noise in the world is silence.” ~Thelonious Monk

Nihilist

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists. ~ Albert Camus

Written In Cursive

Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson. ~ Ann Beattie

Jingoism

The avante-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense. ~ David Mamet

“The light is the left hand of darkness.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The Mad Ones

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” ~John W. Gardner

“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Law Of Life

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” ~ John F. Kennedy

Butterfly

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

“Two truths cannot contradict one another.” ~Galileo Galilei

The Sun

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.” ~ Galileo Galilei

“Knowing thyself, that is the greatest wisdom.” ~Galileo Galilei

Love

Understanding Ourselves

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The Opportunist

“Dear optimist, pessimist, and realist–while you guys were busy arguing about the glass of wine, I drank it! Sincerely, the opportunist!” ~ Lori Greiner – Inventor, Born: December 9, 1969

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” ~ Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes – Philosopher, 1588-1679

Realistic Fiction

“To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin – Author, Born: October 21, 1929

Define Your Character

“Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it’s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you’reContinue reading “Define Your Character”

“Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music.” ~Albert Collins

“We are our choices.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

“I know what I can know, and am not troubled about what I cannot know.” ~Johann Gottlieb Fichte*

*Philosopher, 1762-1814

Lie Is A Lie

“But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.” ~ Immanuel Kant

You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am. ~Immanuel Kant

Three Things

“Three things tell a man: his eyes, his friends and his favorite quotes” ~ Immanuel Kant

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre

Bleak Midwinter

“In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, Snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.” ~ Christina Rossetti, Poet 1830-1894

“How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?” ~ Rene Descartes

Good Books

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” ~ Rene Descartes

“If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?” ~Steven Wright

The Coffee Shop

“…Seattle has unleashed this weird phenomenon on the world called the coffee shop. And the coffee shop, thanks to Starbucks, is the place where socially isolated, lonely, needy people gather together to ignore one another.” ~ Mark Driscoll

Houston Coffee House Scene

“Lightnin’ Hopkins was something of a fixture on the Houston coffee house scene so we were witness to eccentric blues brilliance close up. Then, believe it or not, along came the wave of the English cats like John Mayall, Eric Clapton and the Stones embracing the great American art form – the blues.” ~ BillyContinue reading “Houston Coffee House Scene”