Esther T Quotes

Do you know what a poem is, Esther?' No, what?' I would say. A piece of dust.' Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.' And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn't sleep.

The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights.

Just be happy, and if you can't be happy, do things that make you happy. Or do nothing with the people that make you happy.

The greatest gift you can ever give another person is your own happiness

Isn’t it sad that so often it takes facing death to appreciate life and each other fully?

Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone listened to Zeus.

I do hope that when the day comes, whether in 1, 10, or 100 years, I don’t want you to think of me and feel sad.

Esther, however, was the only woman who understood one very simple thing: in order to be able to find her, I first had to find myself.

You cannot amputate your history from your destiny, because that is redemption.

We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skill...we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.

Look around less, imagine more.

Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.

If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself of all of that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world, or control your mate, or control your child. You are the only one who creates your reality. For no one else can think for you, no one else can do it. It is only you, every bit of it you.

While Leo fussed over his helm controls, Hazel and Frank relayed the story of the fish-centaurs and their training camp. 'Incredible,' Jason said. 'These are really good brownies.' 'That's your only comment?' Piper demanded. He looked surprised. 'What? I heard the story. Fish-centaurs. Merpeople. Letter of intro to the Tiber River god. Got it. But these brownies--' 'I know,' Frank said, his mouth full. 'Try them with Ester's peach preserves.' 'That,' Hazel said, 'is incredibly disgusting.' 'Pass me the jar, man,' Jason said. Hazel and Piper exchanged a look of total exasperation. Boys.

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?

If something you want is slow to come to you, it can be for only one reason: You are spending more time focused upon its absence than you are about its presence. If

The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out of the prisons of our selves.

We live in a world defined by its boundaries: You cannot travel faster than the speed of light. You must and will die. You cannot escape these boundaries. But the miracle and hope of human consciousness is that we can still conceive of boundlessness.

And I realize now that that was . . . that’s the best way to love someone. Hold them close, know that you’re loved, let it wash over you

You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther

If you want it and expect it, it will be yours very soon.

Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.

If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.

- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!? - You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!

Our partner's sexuality does not belong to us. It isn't just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction.

Incredible,” Jason said. “These are really good brownies.” “That’s your only comment?” Piper demanded. He looked surprised. “What? I heard the story. Fish-centaurs. Merpeople. Letter of intro to the Tiber River god. Got it. But these brownies—” “I know,” Frank said, his mouth full. “Try them with Esther’s peach preserves.” “That,” Hazel said, “is incredibly disgusting.” “Pass me the jar, man,” Jason said. Hazel and Piper exchanged a look of total exasperation. Boys. Percy, for his part, wanted to hear every detail about the aquatic camp. He kept coming back to one point: “They didn’t want to meet me?” “It wasn’t that,” Hazel said. “Just…undersea politics, I guess. The merpeople are territorial. The good news is they’re taking care of that aquarium in Atlanta. And they’ll help protect the Argo II as we cross the Atlantic.” Percy nodded absently. “But they didn’t want to meet me?” Annabeth swatted his arm. “Come on, Seaweed Brain! We’ve got other things to worry about.

Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.

I feel very lucky to know you—and as far as I have seen, to know you is literally to love you.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

How old are you Johnny" she asked. Sixteen." And what's that-a boy or a man?" He laughed. "A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war.

One day I realized, without God, nothing matters. So, I asked Him into my heart.

The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships . . . which are basically a reflection of your sense of decency, your ability to think of others, your generosity.

Oddly, the most freeing thing we can ever do is to abdicate the throne of our own miniature kingdoms.

It’s hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy.

The world is full of marvels, if you're willing to travel far enough to see them.

There ain't no "baby mama drama" up in this Vortex, homie!

You are joy, looking for a way to express. It's not just that your purpose is joy, it is that you are joy. You are love and joy and freedom and clarity expressing. Energy-frolicking and eager. That's who you are.

stop talking about the things that are bothering you so much.

When loved ones die, people always say, “Don’t be sad. I’m sure they would have wanted you to be happy.” I’m sure that’s true. But let’s be realistic here, people also want to be missed. It is every person’s nightmare to leave the world behind as if they had never been there at all.

You are actually pre-paving your future experiences constantly. ... You are continually projecting your expectations into your future experiences.

What brothers say to tease their sisters has nothing to do with what they really think of them.

She used that word at some point referring to her family's love, infinite, and I thought about how infinite is not a large number. It is something else entirely. It is boundlessness.

Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.

The moment you say , , or , the skies will open for you and the non- physical energies begin instantly to orchestrate the manifestation of your desire.

Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it.

For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered.

After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke.

I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.

If you can't do, you'd best shut up about it.

... the truth holds the greatest magic, the greatest beauty, and sometimes the greatest danger....

It is not your job to make something happen—Universal Forces are in place for all of that. Your work is to simply determine what you want.

And many of the townsfolk of Boston seem more concerned with the profit of their business than the great cause that is swirling around them.

If you can't do, you had best shut up. He started to slam the door, thought better of it. If you can't do, you'd best not slam doors.

We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long.

It's hard to experience desire when you're weighted down by concern.

We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other.

Are you really going to catch us and take us back to Esther? We don’t belong to her, you know.” Embarrassed, Victor stared at his shoes. “Well, children all have to belong to somebody,” he muttered. “Do you belong to someone?” “That’s different.” “Because you’re a grown-up?

On rocky islands gulls woke.

No soy inmortal, pero te aseguro que mi amor por ti sí lo es

I forget, because it’s hard to realize that the same person who gives you so much love, and to whom you give so much in return, can go through the kinds of pain and suffering that nothing you do can alleviate.

You can get to where you want to be from wherever you are—but you must stop spending so much time noticing and talking about what you do not like about where you are.

...el motivo aparente por el que hacemos las cosas casi nunca coincide con el motivo real que nos mueve a hacerlas. -Clara

God is the reason I’m surviving, but he’s sure used you in my life wonderfully. I love you.

Life Is Always in Motion, So You Cannot Be "Stuck

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.

Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

that nothing will come into your experience unless you invite it through your thought—with emotional

Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.

A man can stand up

It was sink or swim for him—and happens he’s swimming.

Being brave doesn't mean always having to fight alone.

The shift from shame to guilt is crucial. Shame is a state of of self-absorption, while guilt is an emphatic, relational response, inspired by the hurt you have caused another.

And I remember telling God that whatever happens, happens. I remember telling myself "He's in control.

THE fourteenth of April, 1775.

Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.

The first of the tea ships, the Dartmouth,

Hay momentos que justifican una vida. Y vidas que duran un suspiro. La mía tiene sentido, amor, porque te he conocido.

The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture.

saying. ‘I want it as a birthday present to my venerable

The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.

there is so much more that is going right in your world than wrong.

The only way to consciously deactivate a thought is to activate another. In other words, the only way to deliberately withdraw your attention from one thought is to give your attention to another.

We no longer plow the land together; today we talk. We have come to glorify verbal communication. I speak; therefore I am. We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words.

I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.

There is no desire that anyone holds for any other reason than that they believe they will feel better in the achievement of it. Whether it is a material object, a physical state of being, a relationship, a condition, or a circumstance - at the heart of every desire is the desire to feel good. And so, the standard of success in life is not the things or the money - the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.

Beginnings are always ripe with possibilities, for they hold the promise of completion. Through love we imagine a new way of being. You see me as I’ve never seen myself. You airbrush my imperfections, and I like what you see. With you, and through you, I will become that which I long to be. I will become whole. Being chosen by the one you chose is one of the glories of falling in love. It generates a feeling of intense personal importance. I matter. You confirm my significance.

your life-and everyone else in the Universe is playing the part that you have assigned to them. You can literally script any life that you desire, and the Universe will deliver to you the people, places, and events just as you decide them to be. For you are the creator of your own experience-you have only to decide it and allow it to be.

Let your alignment (with Well-Being) be first and foremost, and let everything else be secondary. And not only will you have an eternally joyous journey, but everything you have ever imagined will flow effortlessly into your experience. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have—but your dominant intent is to be joyful. The doing and the having will come into alignment once you get that one down.

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?). I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand: WE WUZ PUSHED.

Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew—or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.

If one person sits down at their computer one day and types one word, dose that affect the future? If that one person didn't type that one word, would the future's history be changed? Dose their one word even mean anything? Dose my one (times a lot) word mean anything? Dose that one person's one word even get read-once? If I wasn't sitting here writing my words, would my future be different?

Now, lying on my back in bed, I imagined Buddy saying, ‘Do you know what a poem is, Esther?’ ‘No, what?’ I would say. ‘A piece of dust.’ Then just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, ‘So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you’re curing. They’re dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.’ And of course Buddy wouldn’t have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn’t sleep.

We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids, that it’s inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting? Children who see their primary caregivers at ease expressing their affection (discreetly, within appropriate boundaries) are more likely to embrace sexuality with the healthy combination of respect, responsibility, and curiosity it deserves. By censoring our sexuality, curbing our desires, or renouncing them altogether, we hand our inhibitions intact to the next generation.

Every time I look at it, It looks back at me I love the sea, its waters are blue And the sky is too And the sea is very dear to me If when I grow up and the sea is still there Then I’ll open my eyes and smell the fresh air Because the sea is very dear to me The sea is very calm and that’s why I like it there The sand is brand new and the wind blows in my hair And the sea is very dear to me.

Monogamy, it follows, is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it is the marker of our specialness: I have been chosen and others renounced. When you turn your back on other loves, you confirm my uniqueness; when your hand or mind wanders, my importance is shattered. Conversely, if I no longer feel special, my own hands and mind tingle with curiosity. The disillusioned are prone to roam. Might someone else restore my significance

While it does, and should, feel good to be appreciated by another person, if you are dependent upon their appreciation to feel good, you will not be able to consistently feel good, because no other person has the ability, or a responsibility, to hold you as their singular, positive object of attention. Your Inner Being, however, the Source within you, always holds you, with no exceptions, as a constant object of appreciation. So if you will tune your thoughts and actions to that consistent Vibration of Well-Being flowing forth from your Inner Being—you will thrive under any and all conditions.

down Cambridge road through the bushes on Charlestown Common a scurry of red ants. Had he really seen them or imagined them? But all about him people were exclaiming, ‘Look, there they are!’ Those red ants were British soldiers. To his left the last moment of sunset light was dying. The day had been amazingly warm, but with night a fresh breeze came up off the ocean. Lights began to glimmer in Charlestown and on warships. Seemingly there was nothing more to be seen from Beacon Hill. Silently people turned to go to their houses. ‘Look!’ Johnny cried. You could see the flash of musket fire, too far away to be heard. Fireflies swarming, hardly more than that. –4– Getting

...this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term, not because we want 14 children, for which we need to have even more because many of them won't make it, and not because it is exclusively a woman's marital duty. This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire. So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs... So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship, or what we today like to call a passionate marriage, used to be a contradiction in terms. Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.