The Story Of Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

The definition of a good story is one that remains with you long after you've turned that last page. — T.A. Uner

Most of the movies are working like, 'Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut' and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information - I try to involve, to the movie, the time, the space, and a lot of other things - which is a part of our life but not connecting directly to the story-telling. And I'm working on the same way - 'information, cut, information, cut,' but for me the information is not only the story. — Bela Tarr

[T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world. — Daniel Quinn

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means. — Cheryl Strayed

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundations on which we live and more and have our being. — James W. Sire

The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It's the tender understanding that we're living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there's quite a bit of wonder in that. — F.K. Preston

Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. — Anne Carson

This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Renaissance literally means 'rebirth'. It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context. — Douglas Rushkoff

To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. — Barbara Kingsolver

What was true of an ancient community of Christian believers struggling with a powerful and appealing philosophy is also true for Christians in a postmodern context. Arguments that deconstruct the regimes of truth at work in the late modern culture of global capitalism are indispensable. So also is a deeper understanding of the counterideological force of the biblical tradition. But such arguments are no guarantee that the biblical metanarrative will not be co-opted for ideological purposes of violent exclusion, nor do arguments prove the truth of the gospel. Only the nonideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible. — Brian J. Walsh

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant
Once there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.
Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.
People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.
The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.
Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line and the eggplant hadn't moved an inch.
The spectators ate the eggplant.
Moral: Never bet on an eggplant. — Daniel Pinkwater

Would we believe their story; if the dead should return? — Lailah Gifty Akita

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world.
To all of them the logical structure is common.
(Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one.) — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Nearly all ancient peoples worshiped sex in some form and ritual, and not the lowest people but the highest expressed their worship most completely [ ... ]. The sexual character and functions of primitive deities were held in high regard, not through any obscenity of mind, but through a passion for fertility in women and in the earth. Certain animals, like the bull and the snake, were worshiped as apparently possessing or symbolizing in a high degree the divine power of reproduction.
The snake in the story of Eden is doubtless a phallic symbol, representing sex as the origin of evil, suggesting sexual awakening as the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil, and perhaps insinuating a certain proverbial connection between mental innocence and bliss. — Will Durant

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I'm too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She's waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I'm eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I'm so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met? — F.K. Preston

Every human being carries with them the stories of their ancestors, the story of their generation, and the rudiments of pliable clay to build future storylines that will shape their community of kindred souls. Storytelling unites us as a species and supplies texture to our lives. By listening to other people's stories and by sharing our personal story, we deftly weave the threads that compose the sacred hoop of the tribe. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I realized that I had the choice. I could give this moment a meaning, or I could choose to ignore it. It just depended on the kind of story I wanted to tell myself. — Dan Chaon

There is a specific feeling that comes about during the dying embers of a relationship. Different from the Monday morning quarrels before work because you two are tired, different from the "I'm not going to talk to you for a while because I am mad at you" silences. Breaks ups happen instantly, yet the process occurs over a gradual period of time, with tear by tear until what was once whole, rips into two. Breakups are the disappointment we feel when we wanted our lover to finish the story with an exclamation mark, but instead are left with a question mark. — Forrest Curran

Myths grew from the ancient tradition of passing on knowledge orally, the only means of doing so before writing.
They're narratives of human existence. They helped our ancestors interpret reality, solve problems, and guided social behavior. They structured natural and social information into patterns using symbols, and embedded fact into story form. This increased their impact, making information meaningful and personally involving - not just cold, detached facts. — Alan Joshua

In the sea of my emotions, his presence is like a pearl in the oyster. Very hard to locate, yet very precious and still beautiful. — Mehek Bassi

It's been reinforced to me, and it's a little cliche, but I've learned that you can't make a movie that even works, much less that's good, without really good writing and really good acting. That lesson has led me to not be distracted, so much, by the other stuff going on in filmmaking and to focus on the essence of a story, and the words and the events and the way that those are interpreted by the actors. That philosophy has taken me to a place that I really like. — Ben Affleck

You are the storyteller and the editor of your book of life. So write tales of imagination, tragedy, and adventure and illustrate it with the colors of beauty. — Debasish Mridha

Life is a great Book. We are writing the history of our time. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes. — Andre Dubus III

Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

I wanted to know the denouement of your life story. I have no interest in the narrative. — Debasish Mridha

A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world. — T.A. Uner

Storytelling entails weaving a narrative out of the disturbing, strange, inspirational, and unremarkable detritus of life. By picking among the litter of our personal experiences to select evocative anecdotes to weave into a narrative format, we reveal which of life's legendary offerings prove the most sublime to us. Acts of omission are momentous. Our narration of personal sketches divulge what factoids inspire us or do not stir us into action, or contain obdurate truths that prove virtually impossible to crack. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The real desire [of feminism] is to break away from rationalism, androcentrisim and all forms of philosophy and practices that discriminate against women. The objective is to recover the use of senses, desire, taste, pleasure, pain and the mystery of life. It is a point of view which seeks to reflet with the body, that is, with sensitivity, with sexuality and, finally, with the story of the body itself. ~ Valmar Da Silva in Reading Other-Wise p. 125 — Gerald O. West

I had always been an atheist until I met Lenny. He was too wonderously complex and good for there to be no benevolent and intelligent force behind our marvelous cosmos. Lenny gave me the actual proof my fiercely skeptical mind had always demanded. Not some logical, 37-step proof of God's existence. It was a personal proof. And it was irrefutable. — Zack Love

I wish I could run into the world's arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself. — F.K. Preston

Our lives are a novel being written. We are its author. Every action we encounter and every person we meet has a role and a place in our ultimate story. It is in our control to decide the level of how, who and what impacts us and how large a role we decide to assign each. — Mark W. Boyer

The amateur study of philosophy is like taking a few laps with a NASCAR driver. You're not qualified to do it on your own, you have no business behind the wheel, but for a few laps or paragraphs, you're right in there with 'em, and when it's all over, you've learned something. Or, as my local fire chief once said, you've simply exasperated the situation. — Michael Perry

The truth is there isn't anything to me at all. All I know is that I can't sleep well, I can't dream well and I'm quite in love with you. That's all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it's not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That's when I realise you're dead. That's when I remember you've been gone for years. That's when I remember I'm awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever. — F.K. Preston

No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk. — Herbert Spencer

What happened to us? It was a question that interested her. Most people seemed to believe that they were experts of their own life story. They had a set of memories that they strung like beads, and this necklace told a sensible tale. But she suspected that most of these stories would fall apart under strict examination--that, in fact, we were only peeping through a keyhole of our lives, and the majority of the truth, the reality of what happened to us, was hidden. Memories were no more solid than dreams...What happened to us? She drew smoke, considering the question. Was it possible that we would never really know? What if we were not, actually, the curators of our own lives? — Dan Chaon

The ending shouldn't determine the meaning of anything, a story or a life. Logically, I don't think it can--didn't Heidegger say something to that effect? That the meaning of all our moments cannot be contingent upon an end-point over which we have no control? That if we are happy right now, that means something, even if we die tomorrow? Narrative integrity is overrated. I don't need to know that the story of my life has a happy ending to enjoy it. A good thing, too, because I hear all the characters die in the end. — Alexa Stevenson

Every memory we have changes slightly each time we think about it. We add stuff we learn in other places, or we forget stuff that doesn't seem important anymore. Or you think you remember something, like from your childhood, but actually you've just seen so many pictures of it, and your parents have told you about it, so you think you remember it, but you don't. A memory is a process. Instead of a thing. Like a story we tell ourselves that changes from the standpoint we're looking at it. — Katherine Howe

The left-right political dichotomy serves liberalism by not challenging it. Democracy sustains the status quo by offering the illusion of choice with no choice. Genuine opposition can only emerge if there is an alternative story with which to counter the current mythos. — John Dunn

As millions use social media as a primary source of information, the risk of falling victim to being misinformed is high. Readers who quickly scan newsfeeds tend to only read (and share information about) a headline: focusing on "the hook." Whether due to complacency or lack of time, few explore the content. This allows bogus media outlets to descend on the unsuspecting (and unprepared) seekers of instant information, creating false stories with dazzling one-liners, secure in the knowledge that there will be little effort to pursue confirmation or research an entire story. — Carlos Wallace

I said his line of thought - referring to the philosopher, because this is also a story of men. — Jostein Gaarder

Knowledge is the comprehensive embodiment of imagination that surfaces in observation and finally ripens through the reinforcement of experience thereby inculcating knowledge. This in fact is the short story of life. — Q.M. Sidd

you say that other species are too dumb to believe in gods but we're so advanced and technological that we believe in a super natural story of supreme beings that was thought up thousands of years ago by our primitive ancestors who thought that the sun and planets revolved around the earth, who believed that the gods looked down upon us through windows in the heavens, that is to say, stars, so, yes, we're so advanced that we believe in something that is so clearly fantastical that it's possible that these 'dumb animals' you speak of so derogatively, just might be more intelligent than us. — Arun D. Ellis

The story of liberty and its future is not only about the raw assertion of rights but also about grace, aesthetics, beauty, complexity, service to others, community, the gradual emergence of cultural norms, and the spontaneous development of extended orders of commercial and private relationships. Freedom is what gives life to the human imagination and enables the working out of love as it extends from our most benevolent and highest longings. — Jeffrey Tucker

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story. — Jose Saramago

The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive ... compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic. — Guy Debord

The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. — N. T. Wright

What if..." is my philosophy. I won't say it's plays like a broken record, no, it plays like a I hit the continuous repeat button on a one song playlist. When I see people who are pained and stressed by the world their trapped in, I ask, "What if?" and create their story about why they're constantly rolling their eyes behind their spouses back, then paste a smile when needed. We weren't born to live a life of misery, don't ever believe it. That's just not how it is, it's never to late too find your voice. Dig deep, grasp it and roar. — Eleanor O'Hara

Ain't it funny how a moment could just change your life, and you don't want to face what's wrong or right. Ain't it strange how fate can play a part, in the story of your heart. — Jennifer Lopez

I am the keeper of the beast, though all men harbor a beast in the depths of their heart
callous, calamitous creatures, driven by deviant demands and derisive diligence.
From the short story What Rough Beast — Michael Hibbard

If my life was pulled into the pages of a book, there would be coffee stains and wrinkles along the lines of that narrative. Because all I can wish is that the book of my life would be well read and well loved. Living within words and the sound of writing. — F.K. Preston

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn't change so much anymore. It doesn't change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven't been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I'm human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It's my shadow I see watching me. It's my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on. — F.K. Preston

Through the years the swirl of a pen, click of a key, and the idea of a story have been my deepest passion. I never just decided to become a writer. I was born to be a writer. I knew it from childhood. — Sai Marie Johnson

Does this story have a happy ending?" Bobby asked.
"There is no such thing as an ending," she said. "Good things come out of bad things and bad things come out of good things, but it always continues. It's as in life. Books are life. There is just the part you read. They start before that. They finish after it. Everything carries on forever. You are only in it for those pages, for a tiny window of time. — David Whitehouse

Writing a novel is a bit like being Daniel Boone. An author stands atop a ridge in a mountain range and can generally see a number of peaks in the distance. What lies between those peaks - the dales and glens, rivers, forests, and other features that distinguish one mountain landscape from another... is where the artistry and intrigue of the writing process lives. As the writer sets out into the story, leaving behind those high points - the beginning, a twist here and there, the climax, and, if perhaps a bit indistinct for the distance to cover, the end - entering the vale below, all manner of things can happen the writer never intended or expected at the onset. — Brett Armstrong

A death in reverse is the rewinding of life. I do not die of old age,
in a bed surrounded by strangers my loved ones paid to take care of me.
I die in reverse.
I die falling back
into a younger age.
From my forty-five years to twenty-five.
To sixteen. When we were in love.
To fourteen: when we first met.
To five.
To one.
To the hospital my mother died at
from the complications of my existence.
A life for a life. — F.K. Preston

Whatever I learned,
Whatever I knew,
Seems like those faded years of childhood that flew,
Away in some dilemma,
Always in some confusion,
The purpose of this life,
Seems like an illusion! — Mehek Bassi

I have heard a good story of Charles Fox. When his house was on fire, he found all efforts to save it useless, and, being a good draughtsman, he went up to the next hill to make a drawing of the fire,
the best instance of philosophy I ever heard of. — Robert Southey

It's not only the myths surrounding chess. Chess itself is a myth, you know? A game of hierarchy, of war. It's a story that people have been using to explain complex concepts for eons. Mathematics, yes. Geometry. Business. Philosophy. Even love. — Skye Warren

[Genesis] is not myth. It is not history in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events. Nor is it theology: Genesis is less about God than about human beings and their relationship with God. The theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a deliberately non-philosophical way. It deals with all the central questions of philosophy: what exists (ontology), what can we know (epistemology), are we free (philosophical psychology), and how we should behave (ethics). But it does so in a way quite unlike the philosophical classics from Plato to Wittgenstein. To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system. Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode. — Jonathan Sacks

[Eugene Smith] was always writing these diatribes about truth, and how he wanted to tell the truth, the truth, the truth. It was a real rebel position. It was kind of like a teenager's position: why can't things be like they should be? Why can't I do what I want? I latched on to that philosophy. One day I snapped, hey, you know, I know a story that no one's ever told, never seen, and I've lived it. It's my own story and my friends' story. — Larry Clark

Don't Shoot is a work of moral philosophy that reads like a crime novel - Immanuel Kant meets Joseph Wambaugh. It's a fascinating, inspiring, and wonderfully well written story of one man's quest to solve a problem no one thought could be solved: the scourge of inner city gang violence This is a vitally important work that has the potential to usher in a new era in policing. — John Seabrook

The strangest thing about demons is that they come to love you. As much as they try to murder the very core of you when you first meet, they become your closest companions. I never asked for this devil on my shoulder. But my eyes are burning and I'm not alone. If you see a red gaze at midheaven, look away. It's exactly as they say: hell is a hungry place. — F.K. Preston

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? — F.K. Preston

The story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold all
kinds of wares. Finally he said, What a lot of things I don't need! — Jostein Gaarder

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It's not a black darkness. It's simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I've heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It's all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space. — F.K. Preston

The page is to the story as the seed is to the flower. — Bankei Yotaku

Philosophy does provide me a structure and a way of thinking. Religion - like the religion I grew up with, Mormonism - also provides a way of thinking. And I think those two structures - one highly logical, the other anything but - are always part of my thought process as I'm putting together a story. — Brian Evenson

Love the wife of your youth. Never abandon her. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Nothing that happens is meant to happen or not meant to happen. The 'meant' is the story we tell ourselves that allows us to make sense of what is fundamentally senseless. Does this make our lives less important? Only if that's the story you want to tell yourself. Where do the stories end? They don't. It's stories all the way down. And all the way up. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito
out! Every simile that would have made sub-moron's mouth twitch
gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer
lost!
Every story slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like
in the finale
Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention
shot dead. — Ray Bradbury

What we gain in the world, we lose in the world, forgotten in death. We must rather fancy what we brought into the world, for therein lives our story, our legend. — Palle Oswald

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat - which wasn't there. 'That may be,' said the philosopher, 'but a theologian would have found it. — Julian Huxley

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader. — Larry Correia

If a happy ending is what you're after, stop the story where it makes you smile, or cry for laughter. In life, it's the rare sweetness to have tears of joy, or painless endings. People feel. It's what they know, and it's why i write. — Mark T. Barnes

Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced.
For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do. — Tiffany Madison

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change. — Philip Yancey

Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through.
Politics is full of them ... so is businesses ... so is the church. They're popular. Successful. Some of them work hard, other are slack, but all of them could tell a good story.
Never where there such charming gravediggers in the world's history. — James Hilton

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

Your world is your story with tragedies and triumphs; never forget that you are the editor too. — Debasish Mridha

How our story has been divided up among the truth-telling professions! Religion, philosophy, history, poetry, compete with each other for our ears; and science competes with all together. And for each we have a different set of ears. But, though we hear much, what we are told is as nothing: none of it gives us ourselves, rather each story-kind steals us to make its reality of us. — Laura Riding

To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography. — Tim O'Brien

They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy. — Tom Robbins

You are the writer of your life story; so don't forget to write the best one. — Debasish Mridha

It is organized as a fellowship of men, a system of morals, a philosophy taught by degrees through the use of symbol, story, legend, pictures, and drama. It has served as a center of union among differing backgrounds, cultures, and countries. It serves as the means of conciliating true friendship among persons, who, because of differences, must have otherwise remained at a perpetual distance. — Harry S. Truman

Steve's throat swelled with tension as the intimacy of the moment became more tangible. He moved his eyes from the dark, reflective river, to the dark, reflective pupils in Diane's eyes. They seemed to quiver with tenderness - but then they would grow distant. He found himself continually surprised at the "aliveness" of the person standing just a foot away from him now. She wasn't inanimate: she would flinch if he pinched her, and answer if he asked her. And she was beautiful."
From "The Grand Unified Story"
a short story in Zack Love's Stories and Scripts: an Anthology — Zack Love

More than the aspirations of an innocuous bird inside a cage, its the story of the cage that fascinates. — Ashutosh Gupta

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything! — Flannery O'Connor

And I love that all their overdone liberal bullshit totally backfired," he said. "Of course it did. People are assholes. End of story."
"The world according to Sebastian Tate."
"It's a philosophy that has gotten me far in life. — Kate Scelsa

It is a common error to assume that the lack of a formal education means that shoemakers, weavers, peasants or indigenous peoples cannot be intellectuals. We may even find it difficult to believe that they could acquire a significant book collection, let alone be interested in or engage in philosophy or pass on proper knowledge, not just 'culture' or 'traditions,' to others. Such a misunderstanding excludes many people from history because it assumes they can have no impact on history, or even be affected by it.
Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973 — Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

The story of the "bondage" in Egypt, of the use of the Jews as slaves in great construction enterprises, their rebellion and escape - or emigration - to Asia, has many internal signs of essential truth, mingled, of course, with supernatural interpolations customary in all the historical writings of the ancient East. — Will Durant

But I can't control my dreams. I can't even remember them. For all I know I'm having the time of my life when I sleep, but I just can't remember. So I'm forced to live in a life I have no control over. A life where I'm either numb to everything or terrified of every thought that crosses my mind. If this is all just a dream, then it sure is a disappointing one.

But I still have time to try and control my dreams. I have time to try and make my dreams a reality in this waking life as well. The one bloody thing I have is time. I've got to remember that. I still have time. And despite everything, there is something reassuring about that. — F.K. Preston

Remember, never give up on love. It is easier to give up in search of a better prize, because the brain always keeps craving for new stimulants, but this way you only keep on searching, never to find peace in love. Let me tell you a story. There was a student who asked his teacher, what is love. The teacher said go into the field and bring me the most beautiful flower. The student returned with no flower at hand and
said, I found the most beautiful flower in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone.
We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and after some time start expecting a better one, not knowing that it's the best. Seek for your love, and once you have it never ever give up on it, no matter the situations. — Abhijit Naskar

Revenge. Justice. Love. They are the three stories that all other stories are made up of. It's the trifecta. — April Genevieve Tucholke

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now. — Daniel Quinn

A good story is always written with the tears of tragedies and triumphs, and the love and kindness of our lives. — Debasish Mridha

The Bible isn't an answer book. It isn't a self-help manual. It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity. — Rachel Held Evans

At one point, I began to think that I had a divine doorman. Lenny was the most unlikely incarnation of God I could imagine, and yet, I kept drifting irresistibly towards this absurd conclusion. Despite my staunchly atheistic inclinations, I couldn't explain Lenny any other way. But eventually I came to my senses and realized that he was just one of those game show freaks with an encyclopedic memory. That didn't make him God, did it? Would God proclaim so regularly how much he likes Patsy's Pizza? — Zack Love

The greatest untold story is the evolution of God. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. ... The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'. — Daniel Quinn