Best 533 quotes in «thought provoking quotes» category

I like anything that is thought provoking and elevates one's consciousness to the highest and out of it's safety net, making one breathe aspiration.

I missed the future.

In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture—it won’t accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy’ time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.

I'm avoiding tomorrow, by spending more time in today.

In order for one to be converted to the 'dark' side he/she must have a complete understanding of the 'light' side. With it's understanding we would all want to defy, overpower, or destroy what it is capable of.

I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church--was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words. But I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow--anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.

In order for one to be converted to the 'dark' side he/she must have a complete understanding of the 'light' side With it's understanding we all would want to defy, overpower, or destroy what it is capable of.

In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.

In the end, after kingdoms and armies had fallen, the religions were still fighting, weren't they?

In some cases, you can tell how somebody is being treated by their own boss from the way they are treating someone to whom they are a boss.

I often ponder....Isn't 'Light, Grey & Dark' similar to 'I, Me & Myself' ?

I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't want to see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big...mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.

Into a land of fantasy With haste we cast them all aside No tearing if you cannot see That is what we all make-believe

Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?

Is a dream the ultimate freedom, or the ultimate prison?

Is it better to have something perfect that doesn't fit or something imperfect that fits?

In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: "Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive.

I spend these days in confusion, trying my best to fathom the significance of that shade.... Trying to fathom the suitable answers to my ambiguities, if they can be called as such." - Basil

It doesn't take much, folks: a drop of human kindness, the acknowledgment that we are people, unique and imperfect. In an inhospitable world, sometimes that is all it takes.

It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.

It gets you thinking about all the parts in a story we never see" --he cleared his throat-- "the parts around the edges. You bring someone like that boy so alive before us and there he is set loose in our world so that we can't stop thinking of him. But then the report is over, the boy disappears. He was just a boy in a story and we never know the ending, we never get to close the book. It makes you wonder what happens to the people in them after the story stops--all the stories you've reported for instance. Where are they all now?

It is all right for the mayflies. It is all right if you know you only have another thirty or forty years. You can afford to think small. You can find it easy to imagine that you are a fixed thing, inside a fixed nation, with a fixed flag, and a fixed outlook. You can imagine that these things mean something. The longer you live, the more you realise that nothing is fixed. Everyone will become a refugee if they live long enough. Everyone would realise their nationality means little in the long run. Everyone would see their worldviews challenged and disproved. Everyone would realise that the thing that defines a human being is being a human being.

Is the deer crossing the road, or is the road crossing the forest?

It is impossible, on a day like this, to tell sea from sky.

It is easy, and therefore uninspiring, to love within the norms of acceptance and society. Other than ones own heart, there is no great risk involved; it's all very status quo. The same is tired, but what's outside-the-norm is captivating and gets under people’s skin, pushing their buttons, making them think and revealing their depth as a person, or their lack thereof. It's love against obstacles that inspires the most – a love that faces and ultimately endures through challenges, hardship and ridicule that is courageous and triumphant.

It is the story that lies around the edges of the photographs, or at the end of newspaper account. It's about the lies we tell others to protect them, and about the lies we tell ourselves in order not to acknowledge what we can't bear: that we are alive, for instance, and eating lunch, while bombs are falling, and refugees are crammed into camps, and the news comes toward us every hour of the day. And what, in the end, do we do?

It's better to lose something than never to have had

I think a lot of modern art is complete bullshit. But I admire the creativity. The weird shit people think of! Some of the most interesting things I've ever seen in my life, I've seen in modern art museums. And that's what art is all about. It's supposed to make you think.

It seems to me that really crazy people don't think they're crazy. Why would you?

It seems fine to revolt in front of all, but apologizing fro the same in a similar situation makes you feel small It is an irony! that's what I call..

It is uncertain where Death will await you; there expect it everywhere.

It's not the small of her back, her thighs, or her chest or eyes that matter most. It's the parts of her she's afraid to show that you should get to know.

It's like a lion at the door; And when the door begins to crack, It's like a stick across you back; And when your back begins to smart, It's like a penknife in your heart; And when your heart begins to bleed, You're dead, and dead, and dead, indeed.

It was like trying to think about what he’d be thinking if he never existed. He wouldn’t be thinking about what he was thinking. He just wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t hurt.

It's ironic..here is life passing, like clouds drifting over the sky, yet they don't see what's in front of them. They believe there is something more substantial going on in that little screen in their hands.

It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.

I've been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on the island....Lord of the Flies what about it....You know how you said it wasn't a true measure of humanity since there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls...Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's watching them so they can be who they really are.

I've also had kind of a realization about myself and I might as well share it because no one is reading it. This book probably makes it seem like I hate myself and everything I do. But that's not totally true. I mostly just hate every person I've ever *been*. I'm actually fine with myself right now. I feel like there's a good chance I might make a really good film. One day. Probably in six months I will have changed my mind about that,but whatever. That is just part of the action-packed roller-coaster ride that is the life of Greg S. Gaines.

It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.

I wondered if all a person could hope for was illusion and luck, for I was forced to conclude that the world was fundamentally and appallingly dangerous. It is a lesson I will never forget.

I was well aware of her ghosts. I'd met them, once or twice, during her darkness nights. "I knew you were my one when you wouldn't run," she said. How could I? Of course I stayed, when her ghosts scared my own away. What others were too afraid to see, meant everything to me.

I was always the youngest person to do things, until I wasn't!

Learn to master your thoughts and watch closely what you deposit into your spirit. Speak over your life. Living in peace has transformative power.

Let your action manifest your thought, your belief and your passion.

I wonder what people talk about who've destroyed their lives with addictions other than books and politics and money and war.

Life is going to beat you up, it wouldn't be fair if you didn't throw some punches back at it

Life is going to happen to you. Your destiny will be found in how you respond to life. Most let fate find them; the few find their destiny.

Like any transformation, it feels like leaving behind my old self and yet my new self and new life has yet to form fully; I don't have a map for this, just my instincts

Living in peace has transformative power!