Diaries Inspiration Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Diaries Inspiration. Here they are! All 100 of them:

I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974)
All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.
Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.
Alberto Manguel (A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books)
Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone.
Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)
I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934)
I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.
Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
Virginia Woolf (A Writer's Diary)
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947)
For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all.
Isabelle Eberhardt (The Nomad: Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt)
Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together. You can do it. I can do it. Let's do it.
Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
But what is life if you don't live it?
James Patterson (Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas)
I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.
Mark Twain (The Diaries of Adam and Eve)
In this world love has no color yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.
Izumi Shikibu (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
The reason for my starting a diary is that I have no real friend.
Anne Frank
I've learned one thing: you can only really get to know a person after a row. Only then can you judge their true character!
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
You can get used to anything, I guess, if you've been there enough.
Candace Bushnell (The Carrie Diaries (The Carrie Diaries, #1))
The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.
Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)
People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: "A quiet conscience mades one strong!
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
How true Daddy's words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Love is the bee that carries the pollen from one heart to another.
Slash Coleman (Bohemian Love Diaries: A Memoir)
The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.
Candace Bushnell (The Carrie Diaries (The Carrie Diaries, #1))
I don't have a diary, I don't write things into a diary. I imprint myself into the sky and when the sunlight shines brightly, I can stand under the sun's rays and everything I have imprinted of myself into the sky, I will begin to see again, feel again, remember. And when the wind begins to blow, it blows the details over my face, and I remember everything I left in the sky and see new things being born. I am unwritten.
C. JoyBell C.
Never ignore the feelings that don't seem to make sense.
Susan Mallery (The Knitting Diaries: The Twenty-First Wish / Coming Unraveled / Home to Summer Island)
This is a photograph of me as I wish I looked all the time. Then I might have a chance of getting in Hollywood.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Why does everyone think a guy who prefers love to people is missing something in his life?
Slash Coleman (Bohemian Love Diaries: A Memoir)
If you're explaining, you're losing.
Ronald Reagan (The Reagan Diaries)
Wherever there is light, look for the shadow. The shadow is me.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934)
The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.
Georges Bernanos (The Diary of a Country Priest)
if you'e going to do something, darling, then do it all the way.
Emma McLaughlin (The Nanny Diaries (Nanny, #1))
The Holy Spirit does not speak to a soul that is distracted and garrulous. He speaks by His quiet inspirations to a soul that is recollected, to a soul that knows how to keep silence.
Maria Faustyna Kowalska (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul)
Though I was careful never to mention it, I began to see a new dimension in everything that happened.
Hunter S. Thompson (The Rum Diary)
I want to see the world and do all kinds of exciting things, and a little money won't hurt.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Time heals all wounds.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Work, love, courage and hope, Make me good and help me cope!
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
I am part of everyone I ever dated on OK Cupid.
Slash Coleman (Bohemian Love Diaries: A Memoir)
beauty remains, even in misfortune
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Dream big dreams,because little dreams have no magic.
Rachel Renée Russell (Tales from a Not-So-Talented Pop Star (Dork Diaries, #3))
And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly:
Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
You are the author of your life. So please don’t let anyone including yourself make you think otherwise. If you feel like you don’t like how your story goes, just write it differently. You have the tools, the courage, the power…you have it all!
Iva Kenaz (My Melancholic Diary)
I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free, and yet I can’t let it show.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.
Rob Bignell (Writing Affirmations: A Collection of Positive Messages to Inspire Writers)
As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
God has three answers to our prayers: 1. Yes 2. Not yet 3. I have something better in mind anonymous
Lori Lyons (Adopting in America: The Diary of a Mom in Waiting)
...And keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if... there weren't any other people living in the world.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
2 to 1 2 hearts 1 beat 2 lips will meet 2 birds 1 stone 2 never b alone 2 wills 1 goal 2 haves 1 whole 2 be in love 2 be as One *** ©Clarissa O. Clemens The Poetic Diary of Love and Change - Volume 1
Clarissa Clemens
These empty pages are your future, soon to become your past. T will read the most personal tale you shall ever find in a book.
Anonymous
Always. You fall, I pick you up. Always.
Elle Kennedy (The Graham Effect (Campus Diaries, #1))
The grace of writing is upon me. I love writing. I write daily.
Lailah Gifty Akita
It's a wonderful, inspiring feeling to have real friends who love and understand you. I have never had that feeling before.
Hélène Berr (The Journal of Hélène Berr)
The art of living. Isn't that a funny expression?
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Playing it safe and tiptoeing through life is exhausting. Keeping all of your gifts trapped inside tires the crap out of you. It takes the same amount of effort to create something extraordinary as it takes to create something ordinary.
Lysa Mateu (Psychic Diaries: Connecting with Who You Are, Why You're Here, and What Lies Beyond)
Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.'
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
This is the beginning of the end (talking about the war)... Everyone was saying... But the British Prime Minister said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Do you see the difference?
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Do one thing every day that frightens you,” Princess Mia advised her audience. “And never think that you can’t make a difference. Even if you’re only sixteen, and everyone is telling you that you’re just a silly teenage girl—don’t let them push you away. Remember one other thing Eleanor Roosevelt said: ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ You are capable of great things—never let anyone try to tell you that just because you’ve only been a princess for twelve days, you don’t know what you’re doing.
Meg Cabot (Princess Mia (The Princess Diaries, #9))
Suffering is key to inspiration.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
We all take a different path to the same place. Why we took the path we did will always be a mystery.
Michael Krozer (Diary of a Short Life)
‎A different toothbrush waits in every time zone.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
I arise to face my failures every morning, but I never fail to face them.
Gino Norris (Stress Diary Journal)
your only barriers are what you let it be
Gino Norris (Stress Diary Journal)
The Lord must have created coffee to reward humans for those bad times they sometimes have on Earth. Having charged your heart and brain with a cup of coffee, you’re ready to face the challenges of life. A good cup of coffee makes life seem better.
Sahara Sanders (INDIGO DIARIES: A Series of Novels)
She’s beautiful to look at, she’s new, she’s clean, and perfectly cut. But then you get up and look closely and see that she’s not real. She’s a fake. She doesn't glimmer like a natural diamond or hold the beauty and unbreakable strength of a real diamond. She’s just a manufactured piece of glass. Not the real deal. And sooner or later, that pig headed owner is gonna realize that fake diamonds can never pass for the real ones, no matter how much you wish they would.
Bink Cummings (The Diary of Bink Cummings: Vol 2 (MC Chronicles, #2))
Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breath it seemed I was getting less & less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn't ask for Gods help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed up young man who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all Gods children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.
Ronald Reagan (The Reagan Diaries)
The more time you spend thinking, the less time you spend doing. The less time you spend doing, the more you watch others do. This formula never equals success.
Beatrice McClearn (Diaries of an Emotional Prostitute)
You do not know until tried what you are capable of.
Sarah Broadhead
Hardships occur to build a person’s character.
Sahara Sanders (Gods’ Food (Indigo Diaries, #1))
I have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.
Georges Bernanos (The Diary of a Country Priest)
The only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests.
Virginia Woolf (A Writer's Diary)
Letting go is not about giving up, being lazy, or sacrificing yourself... Letting go doesn't have to mean losing; it can be about coming into a new, open, clean space from which you can create.
Rebekah Gamble (The Talking Stick Diaries: Cherish Your Soul)
The firm has two cats, one for the warehouse and one for the attic. Now it occasionally happen that the two cats met; and the result was always a terrific fight. The aggressor was always the warehouse cat yet it was always the attic cat who managed to win - just like among nations.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
This morning, when I was sitting in front of the window and taking a long, deep look outside at God and nature, I was happy, just plain happy. Peter, as long as people feel that kind of happiness within themselves, the joy of nature, health and much more besides, they'll always be able to recapture that happiness. Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Brontë sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
I think my Mama and Savannah must be special people in the Lord's eyes, as they have gone about doing generous and loving things without even a second thought. For me, it seems like the only thing that comes natural is aggravation and hard word
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
A frightening thought had been growing in me. I'd always assumed that I was the central character in my own story but now it occurred to me that I might in fact be only a minor character in someone else's.
Russell Hoban (Turtle Diary)
...to use the little kick of energy which opposition supplies to be more vigorously oneself.
Virginia Woolf (A Writer's Diary)
Our misery. This suppression of our rational mind is the source of inspiration. Suffering takes us out of our rational self-control and lets the divine channel through us.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
...I love dandelions. They make me feel like sunshine itself, and you will always see some creature resting on an open bloom, if you have a little patience to wait. This vital source for all emerging pollinators is a blast of uplifting yellow to brighten even the greyest of days. It stands tall and proud, unlike all the others opening and swaying in the breeze. The odd one out.
Dara McAnulty (Diary of a Young Naturalist)
You said how Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. (...) You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O’Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness. “According to Thomas Mann,” Peter said, “‘Great artists are great invalids.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
We have the opportunity to get an education and make something of ourselves. We have many reasons to hope for great happiness, but we have to earn it. And that is something you can't achieve by taking the easy ways out. Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Unless you're a true prodigy, you're going to have to practice for a while being bad before you get any good. And it will seem like a waste of time. I remember that feeling well. But don't worry about wasting time, because it'll be so worth it. It's my experience that in the end, life lessons and guitar lessons begin to blur in all sorts of interesting ways.
Brad Paisley (Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me)
I feel the need to fall in love with the world, to forge that relationship ever more strongly. But maybe I don’t have to work so hard. I have thought nature indifferent to humans, to one more human, but maybe the reverse is true. Maybe the world is already in love, giving us these gifts all the time—the glimpse of a fox, tracks in the sand, a breeze, a flower--calling out all the time: take this. And this. And this. Don’t turn away.
Sharman Apt Russell (Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World)
The left half of your brain deals with logic, language, calculation, and reason. This is the half people perceive as their personal identity. This is the conscious, rational, everyday basis of reality. The right side of your brain, is the center of your intuition, emotion, insight, and pattern recognition skills. Your subconscious. Your left brain is a scientist,. Your right brain is an artist. People live their lives out of the left half of their brains. It's only when someone is in extreme pain, or upset or sick, that their subconscious can slip into the conscious. When someone's injured or sick or mourning or depressed, the right brain can take over a flash, just an instant, and gives them access to divine inspiration. A flash inspiration. A moment of insight. According to German philosopher Carl Jung, this lets us connect to a universal body of knowledge. The wisdom all people over all time.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind, believing, for example, that early scientists pursued their ends with unbroken „dedication“ and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual „inspiration“. But none of this is true. Those who went before us were every bit as wayward and unaccountable and unsteady in their longings as people are today. The least breeze, whether it be sexual or psychological – or even a real breeze, carrying with it the refreshment of oxygene and energy – has the power to turn us from our path.
Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries)
The whole island was exactly what a kid growing up in some trailer park--say some dump like Tecumseh Lake, Georgia--would dream about. This kid would turn out all the lights in the trailer while her mom was at work. She'd lie down flat on her back, on the matted-down orange shag carpet in the living room. The carpet smelling like somebody stepped in a dog pile. The orange melted black in spots from cigarette burns. The ceiling was water-stained. she'd fold her arms across her chest, and she could picture life in this kind of place. It would be that time--late at night--when your ears reach out for any sound. When you can see more with your eyes closed than open. The fish skeleton. From the first time she held a crayon, that's what she'd draw.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
I owe a huge debt to Anaïs Nin, because I fell into her diaries, essays, and collected letters in my Twenties and Thirties like a fish falling into water. She was, in some ways, a deeply flawed human being, and perhaps she makes a strange kind of hero for someone like me, committed to the ethical and spiritual dimensions of my craft as well as to the technical ones, but a hero and strong influence she remains nonetheless. Source: Her blog.
Terri Windling
every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind. It may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting psycho-analysed, or perhaps to becoming a monk.
Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness (Routledge Classics))
In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.
Franz Kafka
The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary are her famous words, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” These words are “inspiring,” by which we mean that they flatter us. They make us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. That gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift that lies at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank’s hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.” It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” before meeting people who weren’t. Three weeks after writing those words, she met people who weren’t.
Dara Horn (People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present)
St. Augustine hated the Stoics, Dostoevsky hated the Russian Liberals. At first sight this seems a quite inexplicable peculiarity. Both were convinced Christians, both spoke so much of love, and suddenly - such hate! And against whom? Against the Stoics, who preached self-abnegation, who esteemed virtue above all things in the world, and against the Liberals who also exalted virtue above all things! But the fact remains: Dostoevsky spoke in rage of Stassyulevitch and Gradovsky; Augustine could not be calm when he spoke the names of those pre-Stoic Stoics, Regulus and Mutius Scaevola, and even Socrates, the idol of the ancient world, appeared to him a bogey. Obviously Augustine and Dostoevsky were terrified and appalled by the mere thought of the possibility of such men as Scaevola and Gradovsky - men capable of loving virtue for its own sake, of seeing virtue as an end in itself. Dostoevsky says openly in the Diary of a Writer that the only idea capable of inspiring a man is that of the immortality of the soul.
Lev Shestov (In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths)
I gave him the one thing June cannot give him: honesty. I am so ready to admit what a supremely developed ego would not admit: that June is a terrifying and inspiring character who makes every other woman insipid, that I would live her life except for my compassion and my conscience, that she may destroy Henry the man, but Henry the writer is more enriched by ordeals than by peace.
Anaïs Nin (Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932)
Oh, very well, do you want to know why Ireally think you should keep a journal?” She nodded. “Because someday you’re going to grow into yourself, and you will be as beautiful as you already are smart. And then you can look back into your diary and realize just how silly little girls like Fiona Bennet are. And you’ll laugh when you remember that your mother said your legs started at your shoulders. And maybe you’ll save a little smile for me when you remember the nice chat we had today.
Julia Quinn (The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever (Bevelstoke, #1))
Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
The left half of your brain deals with logic, language, calculation, and reason. This is the half people perceive as their personal identity. This is the conscious, rational, everyday basis of reality. The right side of your brain is the center of your intuition, emotion, insight, and pattern recognition skills. Your subconscious. Your left brain is a scientist,. Your right brain is an artist. People live their lives out of the left half of their brains. It's only when someone is in extreme pain, or upset or sick, that their subconscious can slip into the conscious. When someone's injured or sick or mourning or depressed, the right brain can take over a flash, just an instant, and gives them access to divine inspiration. A flash inspiration. A moment of insight. According to German philosopher Carl Jung, this lets us connect to a universal body of knowledge. The wisdom all people over all time.
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? “No, thank you,” he will think. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly — not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. As all the sentimental themes the sea inspires passed through our conversation, the lights of Antofagasta began to shine in the distance, to the northeast. It was the end of our adventure as stowaways, or at least the end of this adventure now that our boat was returning to Valparaíso. ESTA VEZ, FRACASO this time, disaster I can see him now clearly, the drunk captain, like all his officers and the owner of the vessel alongside with his great big mustache, their crude gestures the results of bad wine. And the wild laughter as they recounted our odyssey. “Hey listen, they’re tigers, they’re on your boat now for sure, you’ll find out when you’re out to sea.” The captain must have let slip to his friend and colleague this or some similar phrase. We
Ernesto Che Guevara (The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey)
In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more…very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. Like others who had a Puritan education, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings. I seemed to myself - no doubt justly - a miserable specimen. Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection…And every external interest inspires some activity which, so long as the interest remains alive, is a complete preventive of ennui. Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind. It may lead to the keeping of a diary, to getting psychoanalyzed, or perhaps to becoming a monk. But the monk will not be happy until the routine of the monastery has made him forget his own soul. The happiness which he attributes to religion he could have obtained from becoming a crossing-sweeper, provided he were compelled to remain one. External discipline is the only road to happiness for those unfortunates whose self-absorption is too profound to be cured in any other way.
Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)
In 2003, Meryl Streep won a career achievement César Award, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Streep’s words (my translation) acknowledged the enduring interest of French audiences in women’s lives and women’s stories: "I have always wanted to present stories of women who are rather difficult. Difficult to love, difficult to understand, difficult to look at sometimes. I am very cognizant that the French public is receptive to these complex and contradictory women. As an actress I have understood for a long time that lies are simple, seductive and often easy to pass off. But the truth—the truth is always very very very complicated, often unpleasant, nuanced or difficult to accept." In France, an actress can work steadily from her teens through old age—she can start out in stories of youthful rebellion and end up, fifty years later, a screen matriarch. And in the process, her career will end up telling the story of a life—her own life, in a sense, with the films serving, as Valeria Bruni Tedeschi puts it, as a “journal intime,” or diary, of one woman’s emotions and growth. No wonder so many French actresses are beautiful. They’re radiant with living in a cinematic culture that values them, and values them as women. And they are radiant with living in a culture—albeit one with flaws of its own—in which women are half of who decides what gets valued in the first place. Their films transcend national and language barriers and are the best vehicles for conveying the depth and range of women’s experience in our era. The gift they give us, so absent in our own movies, is a vision of life that values emotional truth, personal freedom and dignity above all and that favors complexity over simplicity, the human over the machine, maturity over callowness, true mysteries over false explanations and an awareness of mortality over a life lived in denial. In the luminous humanity of their faces and in the illuminated humanity of their characters, we discover in these actresses something much more inspiring than the blank perfection and perfect blankness of the Hollywood starlet. We discover the beauty of the real.
Mick LaSalle (The Beauty of the Real: What Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French Actresses)