Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) Our imagination is stretched to the upmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
Herman Hesse On Destiny
Hermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962) When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god… A man who has …
Billy Collins On Forgetfulness
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire …
Ralph Waldo Emerson On Tomorrow
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to …
Jamaica Kincaid On Writing
Jamaica Kincaid (May 25, 1949 -) When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself. And while I'm doing it, I really have the feeling that this time, at the end of it, I will be other than myself. Of course, every time …
Andre Breton On Reality
Andre Breton (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) I believe in the future resolution of these two states - outwardly so contradictory - which are dreams and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak.
Katherine Anne Porter On Experience
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) I have a very firm belief that the life of no man can be explained in terms of his experiences, of what has happened to him, because in spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of …
Michael Chabon On Writing
Michael Chabon (May 24, 1963 -) I think that if I learned anything, it's that you can feel completely despairing and hopeless and in over your head and lost and incompetent in the course of writing a book, but that doesn't mean all those things are true. You can fight your way through those periods …
Alan Ball On Beauty
Alan Ball (May 13, 1957 -) I have always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… I guess I could be pissed off about what happened to …
Marie Corelli On Death
Marie Corelli (May 01, 1855 – April 21, 1924) There is no death. What we think of as death is merely one of life's greatest transitions. Life’s Greatest Transition
Martin L King On Love
Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) Well, I don’t think of love as, in this context, as emotional bosh, but I think of love as something strong and that organizes itself into powerful direct action. This is what I have tried to teach in the struggle in the South, that we are …
Hokusai On Drawing
Hokusai (October 31, 1760 – May 10, 1849) Ever since the age of six I have had a mania for drawing the forms of objects. Towards the age of fifty I published a very large number of drawings, but I am dissatisfied with everything I produced before the age of seventy. It was at the age …
Seneca On Time
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind …
Primo Levi On Existence
Primo Levi (July 31, 1919 – April 11,1987) Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human …
Rosellen Brown On Writing
Rosellen Brown Writing, getting something down on the page, is a gratification that, like a child faced with a candy bar and an empty stomach, I have trouble postponing.
Oliver Sacks On Healing And Nature
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
Ben Shahn On Artists
Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898–March 14, 1969) The artist occupies a unique position vis-à-vis the society in which he lives. However dependent upon it he may be for his livelihood, he is still somewhat removed from its immediate struggles for social status or for economic supremacy. He has no really vested interest in the status …
Albert Murray On Heroism
Albert Murray (May 12, 1916–August 18, 2013) Heroism, which like the sword is nothing if not steadfast, is measured in terms of the stress and strain it can endure and the magnitude and complexity of the obstacles it overcomes. Thus difficulties and vicissitudes which beset the potential hero on all sides not only threaten his …
Mark Nepo On The Sea
Mark Nepo (February 23, 1951 -) The sea is a great teacher of receiving. Always rising and falling like the clear blood of the earth, the formless water receives everything that enters it. It rejects nothing. Always transparent, the open water gently covers everything, softening whatever it touches, giving itself completely without losing any of …
Pier Paolo Pasolini On Belief
Pier Paolo Pasolini (March 05, 1922 – November 02, 1975) If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.
John O’Donohue On Anam Cara
John O’Donohue ( January 01, 1956 – January 04, 2008) Anam cara’, which is Gaelic phrase meaning “soul friendship”. This is more than an alliance based on common interests or mutual exploitation. It’s not the kind of connection that arises out of the accident of being together in the same place at the same time …
Robert Browning On Now
Robert Browning (May 07, 1812 – December 12, 1889) Out of your whole life give but a moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it,—so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, —condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense— …
Penelope Margaret Lively On Being Human
Penelope Margaret Lively (March 17, 1933 -) We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never …
Albert Einstein On The Mysterious
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as …
Randall Jarrell On Ideas
Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965) It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.
Lewis Hyde On Invocation
Lewis Hyde (1945 -) An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
Andrei Tarkovsky On Solitude
Andrei Tarkovsky (April 04, 1932 – December 29, 1986) I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are …
Kathleen Jamie On Poetry
Kathleen Jamie (May 13, 1962 -) When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it's not about voice, it's about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don't just mean with the …
Anaïs Nin On Love
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) When you are highly sensitized to love, when you vibrate deeply, sexually, bodily, ...the being is enlarged, its capacity highly increased.
Charles Simic On Writing
Charles Simic (May 09, 1938 -) I write to annoy God, to make Death laugh. I write because I can't get it right. I write because I want every woman in the world to fall in love with me.
