“Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it’s no more than a gift on loan.”
John McGahern, The Leavetaking, via Sunbeams (Page 109)
“As far as the writing itself is concerned it takes next to no time at all. Much too much is written every day of our lives. We are overwhelmed by it. But when at times we see through the welter of evasive or interested patter, when by chance we penetrate to some moving detail of a life, there is always time to bang out a few pages. The thing isn’t to find the time for it—we waste hours every day doing absolutely nothing at all—the difficulty is to catch the evasive life of the thing, to phrase the words in such a way that stereotype will yield a moment of insight. This is where the difficulty lies. We are lucky when that underground current can be tapped and the secret spring of all our lives will send up its pure water. It seldom happens. A thousand trivialities push themselves to the front, our lying habits of everyday speech and thought are foremost, telling us that that is what ‘they’ want to hear. Tell them something else.”
William Carlos Williams, via Sunbeams (Page 107)
“What keeps our faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids—all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.”
Garrison Keillor, via Sunbeams (Page 107)
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
M. Scott Peck, via Sunbeams (Page 106)
“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
Theodore Rubin, via Sunbeams (Page 106)
“It takes a long time to become young.”
Pablo Picasso, via Sunbeams (Page 105)
“I love her and she loves me and together we hate each other with a wild hatred born of love.”
Edvard Munch, via Sunbeams (Page 103)
“One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.”
Immanuel Kant, via Sunbeams (Page 103)
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot, via Sunbeams (Page 103)
“I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, via Sunbeams (Page 103)
“It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike.”
William Butler Yeats, via Sunbeams (Page 102)
“Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
Helen Keller, via Sunbeams (Page 102)
“You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided.”
Franz Kafka, via Sunbeams (Page 102)
“In the service of God, you can learn three things from a child, and seen from a thief. From a child you can learn: (1) always to be happy; (2) never to sit idle; and (3) to cry for everything one wants. From a thief you should learn: (1) to work at night; (2) if one cannot gain what one wants in one night to try again the next night; (3) to love one’s co-workers just as thieves love each other; (4) to be willing to risk one’s life even for a little thing; (5) not to attach too much value to things even though one has risked one’s life for them—just as a thief will resell as stolen article for a fraction of its real value; (6) to withstand all kinds of beatings and tortures but to remain what you are; and (7) to believe that your work is worthwhile and not be willing to change it.”
Dov Baer, the Mazid of Mezeritch, via Sunbeams (Page 101)
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
Carl Rogers, via Sunbeams (Page 101) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“Thinking about interior peace destroys interior peace. The patient who constantly feels his pulse is not getting any better.”
Hubert van Zeller, via Sunbeams (Page 100)
“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
Baruch Spinoza, via Sunbeams (Page 100)
“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
John Muir, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”
Oscar Wilde, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon it in the next. The shortest is old age because we shall never be able to think back on it.”
Cesare Pavese, via Sunbeams (Page 99)