I got my reasons to live, I’ve worked to figure out what they are, and I’m not just handing them over to you…. If you wanna tap out ‘cuz your life is sh*t, ya know what, it’s not your life, it’s life … Life is bigger than you, if you can imagine that. Life isn’t something that you possess, it’s something that you take part in.
— Louie C. K.
Discontent is the first necessity to progress.
— Thomas A. Edison
Only the things you do have real, lasting value, not the things you get for the things you do.
— I Wrote This For You, http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/ (via lungpeiling)
“We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement. What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”—
Marina Keegan
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/
5. You’ll question every decision you make and never feel completely certain that you made the right choice. It’s pointless to wonder though. You’re here now so you might as well make it be the right decision.
— 25 Things I’ve Learned In My Twenties (via 365rulesforpremeds)
(Source: soybeanchen)
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
— Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (via parkstepp)
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
— Henry David Thoreau
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work… All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.
— Chuck Close
Tonight was a reminder that life is a gift. It’s a gift in that I didn’t earn it. But more importantly, it’s a gift because there is a Giver. And because we didn’t earn it, we can’t sustain it. Life becomes so much more meaningful (and perhaps even simpler) when you accept those facts. So I thank God that He gave and gives and will give me His breath of life… I will continue to live my life to the fullest and breathe my every breath until the Giver gives no more.
Received a phone call from a good friend:
“Tell me something peaceful, something soggy and something gnawing in your life.”
Something gnawing… my undisturbed study books for the Mcat.
Something soggy… my seemingly uneventful, unsuccessful life post undergrad wondering if I’m on the right track or just wasting my time.
Something peaceful… Fresh air. Going outside, seeing people living life, and realizing that life is breath.. life is movement - steady, consistent, peaceful movement.
Later, when I expressed this anger to my father - “How do you deal with anger?”- he told me he was beyond it at this point. You have to lose expectation. I told him if I did not hope, if I did not expect her to eventually get better, then there is no point to making plans for the future. No hope for me, no hope for her because my future is inextricably tied to hers.
No, he told me - expectation that she will get better means that she should learn because you took the time to help her. Instead, you should accept her with her flaws and accept that she may not get better. And if she does not, your life and her life will go on. Help her, but do not get angry that you have to help her. Help her without feeling angry, help her without the expectation that she will learn from her mistakes, that she will get better. Help her as if you were helping her for the first time, every time, with infinite patience. And you won’t get angry.
Everything essentially boils down to this. The world does not owe you anything. She does not owe me anything no matter how much I give- but it does not mean you should stop giving. I’ve been trying to change my thinking to this this past year, and I think it helps a lot with feelings of stress and anger directed towards people.
—
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
— Ray Bradbury (via thelearningcurve)
(Source: quote-book)
An ocean holds a thousand rivers。 This phrase can be used to describe people who can take a lot of shit in life - they are wise， expansive， and generous。 This is why their heart can hold a thousand different rivers at once。
The picture must radiate light, the bodies have their own light which they consume to live; they burn, they are not lit from outside.
— Egon Schiele (via rosesandmore)
People living deeply have no fear of death.
— Anaïs Nin (via kari-shma)
