Life Quotes
“There are lights, camera and action, but mostly there’s the unreality of making it fit. Happily ever after, a climax at just the right moment, perfect heroes, tension, resolution and a swelling soundtrack. Every element is amplified and things happen right on schedule. Consume enough media and we may come to believe that our life is carefully scripted, and that we’re stars of a movie someone else is directing. This distracts us from the truth that real life is more muddled and less scripted. There is no soundtrack. We’re actually signed up for a journey and a slog. Nothing happens ever after. It’ll change, often in a way we don’t expect. We have no choice but to condense a story when we want to film it. Our real story, on the other hand, cannot be condensed, it can only be lived. Day by day.”
Seth Godin
“Life can only be lived dangerously—there is no other way to live it. It is only through danger that life attains maturity, growth. One needs to be an adventurer, always ready to risk the known for the unknown. That’s what being a seeker is all about. But once one has tasted the joys of freedom and fearlessness, one never repents because then one knows what it means to live at the optimum. Then one knows what it means to burn your life’s torch from both ends together. And even a single moment of that intensity is more gratifying than a whole eternity of mediocre living.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 310)
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”
Bruce Springsteen, Badlands | Read Matt’s Blog on This Quote Here ➜
Siddhartha [Book]
Book Overview: Hesse’s famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin’s search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation.
