β
Nothing quite brings out the zest for life in a person like the thought of their impending death
β
β
Jhonen VΓ‘squez (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut)
β
When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable.
β
β
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
β
Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!
This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!
β
β
William Arthur Ward
β
Before our life story crumbles down from our mind and reaches the dead level of our zest for life, let us dive into the depths of our being and uncover uncharted keystones precious for reawakening. (''Happiness is blowing in the wind'')
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when youβre focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
β
β
W. Somerset Maugham
β
I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries."
"I'm tired of mysteries."
"Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
β
I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at nightβin the moments before I pass off into sleepβideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem. Incredible that anything could happen to take away this bubbling energy, the zest that fills everything I do. It's as if all the knowledge I've soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding. This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy.
β
β
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
β
Expectations are at war, if good feeling and discomfort clash. When we are expecting zest and joy, our good karma may be ousted by distress and frustration, if negative downbeat waves are emitted. Just with a feel of realism, without prejudice, should we step into the future. What will be, will be. Only the fortune of war will tell, since life may be war or peace. ("Fish for silence.")
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
β
β
Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (Wind, Sand and Stars)
β
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
β
β
Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry
β
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let's just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Mort (Discworld, #4; Death, #1))
β
We were just showering," Lex muttered.
"Of course," Uncle Mort said. "Everyone knows how impossible it is to zestfully clean without assistance.
β
β
Gina Damico (Scorch (Croak, #2))
β
The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.
β
β
Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)
β
to teach without zest is a crime.
β
β
Virginia Woolf
β
I want to read every book thatβs written
hear every song that was sung
I want to gaze at every cloud
and hold the zing of each fruit on my tongue.
β
β
Sanober Khan (A touch, a tear, a tempest)
β
You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.
β
β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
β
A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (My Sisterβs Keeper)
β
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
β
β
Wilfred Owen (The War Poems)
β
Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.
β
β
John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
β
Whether they be young in spirit, or young in age, the members of
the Democratic Party must never lose that youthful zest for new
ideas and for a better world, which has made us great.
β
β
John F. Kennedy
β
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast;
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
β
β
Edna St. Vincent Millay
β
In their talk there was nothing but companionship with a distant undertone of passion. In the background there was the unspoken zest of the promise which, in due course and in their own time, would be met.
β
β
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
β
I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.
β
β
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
β
There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten
β
Nothing gives life more zest that running for your life.
β
β
Robert A. Heinlein (Beyond This Horizon)
β
...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.
β
β
Ray Bradbury
β
The act of vividly recalling a patch of the past is something that I seem to have been performing with the utmost zest all my life, and I have reason to believe that this almost pathological keenness of the retrospective faculty is a hereditary trait.
β
β
Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory)
β
What we see as death,
empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this
endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should
seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an
urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no
time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is
never anything to be gainedβthough the zest of the game is to pretend
that there is.
β
β
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
β
Trust me, never mock a romance book,β said Mal with all the zest of a manic street preacher. βYou have no idea the amount of good they can do for you between the sheets and on the streets. If you love you girl? Buy her books.
β
β
Kylie Scott (Dirty (Dive Bar, #1))
β
Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating, by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road he wants to go. I would only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.
β
β
Ray Bradbury
β
The comfort of browning butter and the excitement of lemon zest.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (The Girl Who Chased the Moon)
β
So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors Γ¦ons ago.
β
β
Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker)
β
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
That old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
β
β
Wilfred Owen (The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen)
β
Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted,
I shun all signs of anchorage, because
The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws.
β
β
Claude McKay (Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Editions: Black History))
β
Keep that red-haired girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let her read books until she gets more spring into her step." This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne's death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart's content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more. "I just feel like studying with might and main," she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. "Oh, you good old friends, I'm glad to see your honest face once more - yes, even you, geometry.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
I was moving in a narrow range between busy distractedness and a pervasive sadness whose granules seemed to enter each cell, weighing it down... I ghosted between islands of anxiety... a fatigue that dulled my zest, decanted it. Sorrow felt like a marble coat I couldnβt shed.
β
β
Diane Ackerman (One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir)
β
Too long have I confined myself in Miltonic isolation and meditation. It is clearly time for me to step boldly into our society, not in the boring, passive manner of the Myrna Minkoff school of social action, but with great style and zest.
β
β
John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces)
β
Attempt to be creative for the joy it brings⦠Select something like music, dance, sculpture, or poetry. Being creative will help you enjoy life. It engenders a spirit of gratitude. It develops latent talent, sharpens your capacity to reason, to act, and to find purpose in life. It dispels loneliness and heartache. It gives a renewal, a spark of enthusiasm, and zest for life.
β
β
Richard G. Scott
β
How strange is our mortal zest for fame. Perhaps it is the only way humans can be gods. We achieve immortality not through ambrosia and ichor but through history and reputation. Through statues and epic song
β
β
Stephen Fry (Troy (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #3))
β
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
β
β
Wilfred Owen
β
What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate and bifocals?Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped,, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come to bad ends, blot-on-the town-thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the town and bums,, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.
β
β
John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
β
I am by nature a person suspicious of the economic machine that feeds me. And yet I am a captive of that economic machine, and my mind is structured by its lessons and demands. I consume its wealth with zest. I drive a truck, watch a color television, and write on a computer, but I cannot overcome the feeling that these objects and the industrial culture that produced them are temporary things, a kind of fat beast feeding on the bounty of the earth that will starve to death within the next century, or at least be severely diminished.
β
β
Charles Bowden
β
we read, if we have the true readerβs zest and plate, not to grow more knowing, but to be less pent up and bound within a little circle,βas those who take their pleasure, and not as those who laboriously seek instruction,βas a means of seeing and enjoying the world of men and affairs.
β
β
Woodrow Wilson (On Being Human)
β
Zest is the secret of all beauty.
β
β
Christian Dior
β
Youβre the good kind of faranji, I suppose.β
βOh yes,β she said. βVery good. I even taste good, or so Iβm told.β
He was focused on not falling to his death, and so he missed the mischief in her voice.
βTaste,β he scoffed. βI suppose theyβre cannibals. Whoβs calling them barbarians now?β
Calixte laughed with delighted disbelief, and it was only then, too late, that Thyon
took her meaning. Oh gods. Taste. He flung back his head to look up at her, nearly losing his balance in the process.
She laughed harder at the shock on his face. βCannibals!β she repeated. βThatβs good.
Iβm going to start calling Tzara that. My sweet cannibal. Can I tell you a secret?β She whispered the rest, wide-eyed and zestful: βIβm a cannibal, too.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer, #2))
β
You are fortunate to be an Aquarius because you are known as the humanitarian zodiac sign. You are progressive in your thinking, which is reflected in every aspect of your life. You do not like being told how to live your life, and you will make your decisions clear to anyone who dares question them. You are energetic, with a zest for life. Unfortunately, societyβs boundaries can still be insurmountable, even for an Aquarian such as yourself. You are very much in charge of your own destiny and, if something or someone gets in the way of your aspirations, you wonβt give up on your goals easily. This perseverance earns you respect from others, even if they disagree with what you are hoping to accomplish.
β
β
Rosemary Breen (Horoscope Compatibility for All the Zodiac Signs)
β
Something within me is waking from long sleep, and I want to live and move again. Some zest is returning to me, some immense gratefulness for those who love me, some strong wish to love them also. I am full of thanks for life. I have not told myself to be thankful. I am just so.
β
β
Alan Paton
β
Spirituality is not just about religion, or church attendance, or fidelity to one or other legal requirement. Spirituality is understood to be an innate wisdom of the human heart that enlivens a zest for life, a search for meaning and purpose, a love for all that is good and beautiful, a passion to create a better world, a sensitivity to the life-energy (God, if you wish) that permeates the entire cosmos.
β
β
Diarmuid O'Murchu (Our World in Transition: Making Sense of a Changing World)
β
The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too?
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You)
β
If youβre an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when youβre focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, donβt let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, donβt force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multitasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. Itβs up to you to use that independence to good effect.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
If life wanted to hand me lemons
I was not only going to make lemonade,
but I'd use the zest for cookies,
plant seeds for future fruit and turn the rind into compost to grow flowers, all the while giving thanks for lemons.
β
β
Bridgette Mongeon
β
Now, from this night, this coming morning, no matter how many beds I find myself in between now and my final bed, I shall never be able to have any more of those boyish, zestful affairs--which are, really, when one thinks of it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.
β
β
James Baldwin (Giovanniβs Room)
β
The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, "With emotion, to the man I used to be.
β
β
Barbara W. Tuchman (The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914)
β
If yellow was a sound, he thought, it would be her laugh. Bright and booming, warming and joyful. Different varieties ranging from sunbeams and lemon zest to the soft puffs of golden wattle.
β
β
Mazey Eddings (Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2))
β
He showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. This seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to be the recipient.
β
β
H.G. Wells (The First Men in the Moon)
β
Iβd been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. Because, as Suzanne would say, why not? I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other. I hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all. It was an odd and confounding thing to ponder. Could I have everything? Would I have everything? I had no idea.
β
β
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
β
Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilisation and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted.
β
β
C.L.R. James (The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution)
β
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
β
β
Wilfred Owen (The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen)
β
You're not impatient any more. Then you were in a hurry, because you thought you could encompass everything in your life. You wanted to learn everything and experience everything and be everybody. In a way, that was charming and delightful in you: I used to write in my notebooks that you were zestful. But it also made you seem confused. You did things in fits and starts. You learned as a stammerer talks ... Today, you are not in such a hurry. I think you have decided that you can do only a few things at all well, and they are more than enough.
β
β
John Hersey (The Wall)
β
Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.
β
β
Rafael Sabatini (Scaramouche (Scaramouche, #1))
β
By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor. Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves, into embarrassment
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Zen in The Art of Writing)
β
Come on, people. Doesn't anybody remember how to take a big old knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can carve a face onto it, but can't draw and quarter it? Are we not a nation known worldwide for our cultural zest for blowing up flesh, on movie and video screens and/or armed conflict? Are we in actual fact too squeamish to stab a large knife into a pumpkin? Wait till our enemies find out.
β
β
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
β
This is what Liza knows: People go under. They fall off the world, they go beneath and drown and die. Sometimes, nothing saves youβ¦Liza knows how black the world is, how fast it spins, and how you have to take the taste of apples and the smell of your little girlβs orange zest shampoo where you find them. You have to hold these things and strive, always, for one more word and one more step. You push forward and you fight, for as long as ever you can, until the black world spins and the moon pulls the tide and the water rises up and takes you.
β
β
Joshilyn Jackson
β
It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness.
β
β
William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
β
The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth -- all save this -- come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged.
β
β
Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)
β
Iβve been broke even oftener than Iβve been wealthy. Of the two, being broke is more interesting, as a man who doesnβt know where his next meal is coming from is never bored. He may be angry or several other thingsβbut not bored. His predicament sharpens his thoughts, spurs him into action, adds zest to his life, whether he knows it or not.
β
β
Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)
β
I have known successful businessmen who, upon retirement, lost all zest for life. Their work had given their lives meaning. Often it was the only thing that had given their lives meaning and, without it, they spent day after day sitting at home, depressed, βwith nothing to do.
β
β
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
β
Celery, apples, golden raisins, lemon zest, and a sour creamβmayo dressing flavored the chicken salad, while the crusty bread provided crunch and contrast. I alternated with bites of my strawberry-and-kiwi fruit salad, tossed with lime juice, vanilla, and just a hint of honey.
β
β
Jennifer Estep (Web of Lies (Elemental Assassin, #2))
β
Our children are children for such a small season of life. Let their laughter ring out, their imaginations soar, their feet stomp in puddles, their hands clap for joy. Too soon they will grow up and out of their youthful exuberance and zest and settle into the life and routine of adulthood.
β
β
L.R. Knost (The Gentle Parent: Positive, Practical, Effective Discipline (A Little Hearts Handbook))
β
Poor Willie - running out - ah well - can't be helped - just one of those old things - another of those old things - just can't be cured - cannot be cured - ah yes - poor dear Willie - good Lord! - good God! - ah well - no worse - no better, no worse - no change - no pain - hardly any - great thing that - nothing like it - pure ... what? - what? - ah yes - poor Willie - no zest - for anything - no interest - in life - poor dear Willie - sleep for ever - marvellous gift - in my opinion - always said so - wish I had it
β
β
Samuel Beckett (Happy Days)
β
Let me but live my life from year to year,
With forward face and unreluctant soul,
Not hastening to, nor turning from the goal;
Nor mourning things that disappear
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear
From what the future veils; but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll
To youth and age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
Through rough or smooth, the journey will be joy,
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy --
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest,
Because the road's last turn will be the best.
β
β
Henry Van Dyke (The Poems of Henry Van Dyke)
β
Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgrΓ© lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for some readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them, Hazel Motes's integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author, Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to do so. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.
(Preface to second edition, 1962)
β
β
Flannery O'Connor (3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood)
β
Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks β open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, eager to see what the new day brings. Time and lost steal the zest from the unlucky, and leave them looking longingly at the past. Neoteny is a metaphor for the quality β and the gift β that keeps the fortunate of whatever age focused on all marvelous undiscovered things to come.
β
β
Warren Bennis (Geeks and Geezers)
β
The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (Street Haunting)
β
Michael: You won't really know what's going to happen to you. That's what makes it special. I won't exactly know what's going to happen after I die. Nothing more human than that.
β
β
The Good Place
β
I have made it my mission to inject life into each moment, filling these moments up until they are fat and ready to burst! Life is short, it should be lived.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
it is easier to deal with the devil you know, the price of avoiding primal separation and death anxiety is a partial suicide resolution in which one gives up on life. Peace is purchased at the cost of avoiding spontaneous feelings and encouraging a process of emotional anaesthesiaβa trade-off in which primal anxieties are ameliorated by sacrificing the zest for life.
β
β
Robert W. Firestone (The Fantasy Bond: Structure of Psychological Defenses)
β
Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are! With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their presidentβs arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up with world affairsβor even bothering to know βthe whole storyβ behind the sexual adventure.
β
β
John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)
β
People are always telling us what they think we want to hear. Raw honesty is a refreshing change, isn't it?"
"Refreshing for you, perhaps," Phoebe said with a reluctant smile. "Well, you'll certainly get that from Pandora. She's incapable of being awed by anyone."
"It's one of the reasons I love her," her brother admitted. "I also love her wit, her zest for life, and the fact that she needs me to keep her from walking in circles.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels, #5))
β
When the Creator banished from his sight
Frail man to dark mortality's abode,
And granted him a late return to light,
Only by treading reason's arduous road,β
When each immortal turned his face away,
She, the compassionate, alone
Took up her dwelling in that house of clay,
With the deserted, banished one.
With drooping wing she hovers here
Around her darling, near the senses' land,
And on his prison-walls so drear
Elysium paints with fond deceptive hand.
While soft humanity still lay at rest,
Within her tender arms extended,
No flame was stirred by bigots' murderous zest,
No guiltless blood on high ascended.
The heart that she in gentle fetters binds,
Views duty's slavish escort scornfully;
Her path of light, though fairer far it winds,
Sinks in the sun-track of morality.
Those who in her chaste service still remain,
No grovelling thought can tempt, no fate affright;
The spiritual life, so free from stain,
Freedom's sweet birthright, they receive again,
Under the mystic sway of holy might.
β
β
Friedrich Schiller
β
If you're an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you're focused on a project you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow, steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It's up to you to use that independence to good effect.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as βa zest for life in all its complexity,β as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to βattach our lives to something larger than ourselves.β To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a childβmy βbest piece of poetrie,β as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son.
β
β
Jennifer Senior (All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood)
β
Or rather, it made him into two people. He was by nature a cheerful almost irrepressible person with a great zest for life. He loved good talk and physical activity. He had a deep sense of humour and a great capacity for making friends. But from now onwards there was to be a second side, more private but predominant in his diaries and letters. This side of him was capable of bouts of profound despair. More precisely, and more closely related to his mother's death, when he was in this mood he had a deep sense of impending loss. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever.
β
β
Humphrey Carpenter (J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography)
β
A man of adequate vitality and zest will surmount all misfortunes by the emergence after each blow of an interest in life and the world which cannot be narrowed down so much as to make one loss fatal. To be defeated by one loss or even by several is not something to be admired as a proof of sensibility, but something to be deplored as a failure in vitality. All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident.
β
β
Bertrand Russell
β
Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto.
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Zen in The Art of Writing)
β
Here the first of the things that happened, happened. The first of the things important enough to notice and to remember afterward, among a great many trifling but kindred ones that were not. Some so slight they were not more than gloating, zestful glints of eye or curt hurtful gestures. (Once he accidentally poured a spurt of scalding tea on the back of a waitress' wrist, by not waiting long enough for the waitress to withdraw her hand in setting the cup down, and by turning his head momentarily the other way. The waitress yelped, and he apologized, but he showed his teeth as he did so, and you don't show your teeth in remorse).
β
β
Cornell Woolrich (Angels of Darkness)
β
At every moment of life the civilised man is hedged about by restrictions of impulse: if he happens to feel cheerful he must not sing or dance in the street, while if he happens to feel sad he must not sit on the pavement and weep, for fear of obstructing pedestrian traffic. In youth his liberty is restricted at school, in adult life it is restricted throughout his working hours. All this makes zest more difficult to retain, for the co ntinual restraint tends to produce wearin ess and boredom. Nevertheless, a civilised society is impossible without a very considerable degree of restraint upon spontaneous
impulse, since spontaneous impulse will only produce the simplest forms of social c ooperation, not those highly complex forms which modern economic organisation demands
β
β
Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)
β
What do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate?
Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders.
Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The Character, in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story. The zest and gusto of his need, and there is zest in hate as well as in love, will fire the landscape and raise the temperature of your typewriter thirty degrees.
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You)
β
There should be no difficulty in understanding this love. Each one of you knows what love is. You know how restless one is to get close to whomsoever one loves; what pleasure one feels even in taking the name of the beloved and in taking that name again and again; the earnest zest with which one strives to win over one's beloved, and the extent to which one dreads the displeasure of the beloved. Just keep examining to what extent you have attained this love. Peep into your heart and see what is the place of Allah therein. The same shall be your place to Him.
β
β
Khurram Murad (Dying and Living for Allah)
β
Yes You Are!
Like the Blossoming rose,
Like the Rays of hope.
Like a deer in the forest,
Like an athlete full of zest.
Like a lamp in temple,
Like the life feeling ample.
Like the feel of the dawn,
Like the grace of the swan.
Like the melody of sitar,
Like the rage of guitar.
Like a group of angels in the sky,
Like the pot that makes you high.
Like the peacock's dance,
Like she is the romance.
Like the silent talk,
Like the wine from Medoc.
Like the colors of life,
Like the music from the fife.
Like the calmness of the cold wind
Like the beauty of the hind.
β
β
Ameya Agrawal (A Leap Within)
β
From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction than anything peace could offer; and that has now become the underlying vision of Nazism. That is where it draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty towards internal opponents. Anyone who does not join in the game is regarded not as an adversary but as a spoilsport. Ultimately that is also the source of Nazism's belligerent attitude towards neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors but must be opponents, whether they like it or not. Otherwise the match must be called off!
β
β
Sebastian Haffner
β
It is all too easy to observe a few "symptoms" and from these diagnose a "psychosis" - as, for instance, one might regard love as a "psychosis" if considered just on the basis of the "symptoms". Lovers, after all, display not infrequently such "symptomatic behavior" as monomania, folie Γ deux, "paranoidal" suspicion, extreme fluctuations of mood, hypermnesia (as regards the beloved's words), illogicality, delusions, idΓ©e fixe, ideas of reference, the belief they can read one another's mind, impaired or distorted perception (especially as regards perception of the beloved), physical states ranging from apparent neurasthenic fatigability and lack of zest to apparent hyperhedonia and hyperkinesis, and so on. But if love is madness, then we all carry within us a powerful desire to be mad - at least once.
β
β
Robert E.L. Masters (The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience)
β
And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum--which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing--stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him.
β
β
Thomas Hardy (The Mayor Of Casterbridge)
β
Not only is religion thriving, but it is thriving because it helps people to adapt and survive in the world. In his book Darwin's Cathedral, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion provides something that secular society doesn't: a vision of transcendent purpose. Consequently, religious people have a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make them more cohesive, adaptive, and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force.
β
β
Dinesh D'Souza (What's So Great About Christianity)
β
By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless. He never, fatigued and unable to maintain the rigors of creativity, resorts to mass-producing copies. Each
life is a fresh canvas on which he uses lines and colors, shades and lights, textures and proportions that he has never used before.
We see what is possible: anyone and everyone is able to live a zestful life that spills out of the stereotyped containers that a sin-inhibited society provides. Such lives fuse spontaneity and purpose and green the desiccated landscape with meaning. And we see how it is possible: by plunging into a life of faith, participating in what God initiates in each life, exploring what God is doing in each event.
β
β
Eugene H. Peterson (Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best)
β
Destiny comes suddenly, bringing concern; she stares at you with horrible eyes and clutches you at the throat with sharp fingers and hurls you to the ground and tramples upon you with ironclad feet; then she laughs and walks away, but later regrets her actions and asks you through good fortune to forgive her. She stretches her silky hand and lifts you high and sings to you the Song of Hope and causes you to lose your cares. She creates in you a new zest for confidence and ambition. If your lot in life is a beautiful bird that you love dearly, you gladly feed to him the seeds of your inner self, and make your heart his cage and your soul his nest. But while you are affectionately admiring him and looking upon him with the eyes of love, he escapes from your hands and flies very high; then he descends and enters into another cage and never comes back to you. What can you do? Where can you find patience and condolence? How can you revive your hopes and dreams? What power can still your turbulent heart?
β
β
Kahlil Gibran (11 Books: The Prophet / Spirits Rebellious / The Broken Wings / A Tear and a Smile / The Madman / The Forerunner / Sand and Foam / Jesus the Son of Man / Lazarus and His Beloved / The Earth Gods / The Wanderer / The Garden of the Prophet)
β
Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everthing lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In a world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.
β
β
John Steinbeck
β
most creative among us β but passive slaves to the laws of physics that govern our neurons? Could machines have emotions? Do our emotions and our intellects belong to separate compartments of our selves? Could machines be enchanted by ideas, by people, by other machines? Could machines be attracted to each other, fall in love? What would be the social norms for machines in love? Would there be proper and improper types of machine love affairs? Could a machine be frustrated and suffer? Could a frustrated machine release its pent-up feelings by going outdoors and self-propelling ten miles? Could a machine learn to enjoy the sweet pain of marathon running? Could a machine with a seeming zest for life destroy itself purposefully one day, planning the entire episode so as to fool its mother machine into βthinkingβ (which, of course, machines cannot do, since they are mere hunks of inorganic matter) that it had perished by accident?
β
β
Andrew Hodges (Alan Turing: The Enigma)