Quotes & Sayings About Thought For The Day

It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us. — Ian McEwan

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Let it be remembered that most men live in a world of their own, and that in that limited circle alone are they ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir Mulberry's world was peopled with profligates, and he acted accordingly.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world. But there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement. — Charles Dickens

Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam ...
Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butte. Onomatopoetic , she'd discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the thing they were describing, like cuckoo. But she thought there should be a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn't, but would if it did.
Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it'd go glint!And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like glitterglitter. Gleam was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And glisten was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily. — Terry Pratchett

The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy. — Maria Montessori

The experts are right, he thought. Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone. Their heels made a ringing sound on the pavement and the rain splashed from the gutterings above. A fine ending to an evening that had started with brave hope, with innocence. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

RVM's Thought for the Day -
Don't lose today ... for today is guaranteed but tomorrow is not. — R.v.m.

A perfect morning; in perfect harmony with myself I'm walking briskly uphill ... For once I didn't notice that I was walking, all the way up to the mountaintop forest I was absorbed in deep thought. Perfect clarity and freshness in the air, up further there's some snow. The tangerines make me completely euphoric. — Werner Herzog

Planning of the next day's activities should be done a night before. This makes you not to be destructed by people and events that do not contribute to the success of your dreams. — Israelmore Ayivor

Not a single thought managed to take shape in her mind: for the likeness of this day to the last seemed to her the clearest proof that it would be another quite useless day, a day she would gladly have done without. For a moment she thought that a day like this would be pointless for anyone on earth, then abruptly changed her mind as she realised that thousands of women, after a hard week's work, or a family quarrel, or even just after catching a cold, would envy her just for having the leisure to rest in comfort. — Ismail Kadare

Jo Wood was sound, sound as a bell. Solid, cynical, amused and occasionally amusing, he did not appear to be very intelligent, and unlike Richard Fawcett and me, seemed uninterested in words, ideas and the world. But one day he said to me:
'I've got it now. It's reading isn't it?'
'I'm sorry?'
'You read a lot, don't you? That's where it all comes from. Reading. Yeah, reading.'
The next time I saw him he had a Herman Hesse novel in his hands. I never saw him again without a book somewhere on his person. When I heard, some years later, that he had got into Cambridge I thought to myself, I know how that happened. He decided one day to read. — Stephen Fry

Life is choice. You can choose to be who you dream to be or not to be. It all lies in the choice you make every day! — Israelmore Ayivor

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle — Anton Chekhov

...Dickey Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them - look hard. Some day if you are clever - cleverer than anyone in the Jago right now - if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough - one of a thousand - maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is - that's your aim in life - there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps - It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devil most, or God help you, Dicky Perrot - though he wont: for the Jago's got you! — Arthur Morrison

I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that it was abnormal for people NOT to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me. — Eugene Ionesco

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

The oak was, of course, a great stealer of the surrounding pasture - its only value to provide shade for the livestock - but it was a magnificent tree. It had been there at least as long as Luxtons had owned the land. To have removed it would have been unthinkable (as well as a forbidding practical task). It simply went with the farm. No one taking in that view for the first time could have failed to see that the tree was the immovable, natural companion of the farmhouse, or, to put it another way, that so long as the tree stood, so must the farmhouse. And no mere idle visitor - especially if they came from a city and saw that tree on a summer's day - could have avoided the simpler thought that it was a perfect spot for a picnic. — Graham Swift

The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.
'Pock! There,' said Czernobog. 'Is done.' There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer's day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.
'Czernobog?' asked Shadow. Then, 'Are you Czernobog?'
'Yes. For today,' said the old man. 'By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.'
'Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could?'
The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. 'Because,' said the old man, after some time, 'there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. — Neil Gaiman

Listen: this story's one you ought to know,
You'll reap the consequence of what you sow.
This fleeting world is not the world where we
Are destined to abide eternally:
And for the sake of an unworthy throne
You let the devil claim you for his own.
I've few days left here, I've no heart for war,
I cannot strive and struggle any more,
But hear an old man's words: the heart that's freed
From gnawing passion and ambitious greed
Looks on kings' treasures and the dust as one;
The man who sells his brother, as you've done,
For this same worthless dust, will never be
Regarded as a child of purity.
The world has seen so many men like you,
And laid them low: there's nothing you can do
But turn to God; take thought then for the way
You travel, since it leads to Judgment Day — Abolqasem Ferdowsi

If I could be God for a day, I would instantly replace July and August with two Septembers so the twelve months of the new calendar year would consist of January, February, March, April, May, June, September, September, September, October, November, December. On second thought, I'd also replace December with another September, thus deleting the Mas season and ending the year with a fourth September. The Mas season, once known as Christmas until we took Christ out of it, leaving only mas, the Spanish word for more, is my least favorable month of the year because of the greed-mandated financial, emotional and spiritual stresses that the economy-dependent celebration of Mas imposes. — Lionel Fisher

I'm with you on measuring this week in letters and the two-day drought we are about to experience. If only there was a way to transport letters faster, through some sort of electronic device that codes messages and sends them through the air. But that's just crazy talk.

Friday from me:

Sending letters through the sky? Like when airplanes attach notes to their tails? I thought they only advertised for going-out-of-business sales. But perhaps our letters would be okay up there as well. I wonder how much they charge per word. — Kasie West

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. — Romain Rolland

We run for an hour and a half?"
"Five miles."
"Every morning?"
"Every morning."
"Even Saturdays and Sunday."
"Yes, but you don't have to do the obstacle course on the weekend."
Obstacle course? Sterling didn't say anything about an obstacle course did he? I'd never run five miles in my entire life and now i was going to have to do it every day? And with obstacles on most of those days? I am going to die, I thought, I am literally going to have a heart attack and die the very first day.
Well, that's one way to get out of being a mandate." — Christine Manzari

Directing first film was terrified, it was really very scary because there is a lot of responsibility. I think I was terrified because I wanted it to work so much. A lot of actors direct movies but I thought the stakes were kind of higher for me because I really, really cared. I just worked as hard as I possibly could on every single thing, every single day. I said that if this failed it would not be because I didn't work as hard as I possibly could ... every day. — Ben Affleck

RVM's Thought for the Day - Life offers us both, Problems and Solutions. It's for us to choose what we want. — R.v.m.

I forced myself to take another bite of bread, chewing casually. But inside I felt stricken, filled with unexpected yearning. And I realized the problem: no one I knew would have come up with that day for me.
This is a man, I thought, who could break my heart. — Lisa Kleypas

Back in the day as a kid, I was really drawn to the Hulk because it just felt so human and was probably one of the first stories that I felt emotionally invested in and not just thought it was really cool. You really feel for that person and put yourself in that situation. — Cress Williams

BEANNACHT For Josie On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the gray window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the curach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life. — John O'Donohue

I felt my face going blank, my eyes going empty. For just an instant I let Marks see the gaping hole where my conscience was supposed to be. I didn't really mean to, but I couldn't seem to help it. Maybe I was more shaken up from the room and its survivors than I thought. It's the only excuse I can give.
Marks' face went from fading laughter to something like concern. He gave me cop eyes, but underneath that was an uncertainty that was almost fear.
"Smile, Lieutenant. It's a good day. No one died."
I watched the thought spill through his face. He understood exactly what I meant. You should never even hint to the police that you're willing to kill, but I was tired, and I still had to go back into the room. Fuck it.
Edward spoke in his own voice, low and empty, "And you wonder why I compete with you? — Laurell K. Hamilton

The people in this world who scorn me
no doubt have a special wisdom,
so I don't write for them:
instead I write with the thought
that since the world is wide and time is endless,
one day someone will be born
whose nature is the same as mine. — Bhavabhuti

I had dreamed that if this moment happened I would be elated and triumphant and flooded with relief, but when you have been keeping company with anxiety and fear for a long time it's hard to shake them off immediately. Also I hadn't really thought about anything behond the immediate goal: getting in. Now I was in and now I was going to have to do this thing, ballet, and not just think about the day I would do it. I realized I still wanted to dream about the person I would become, not actually be her. I was worried that I would work hard and nothing would happen, that I was as good as I would ever be. — Meg Howrey

I have thought I am creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no more seen. I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven
how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book]. — John Wesley

As I took Allison to the airport for her flight into San Francisco and the rest of her life, I thought about how lucky her father and I were to have had her in our lives. My time with her was over, though I was sure we would stay in touch. I kept thinking I should be sad, but I felt content more than anything. Now, I'm not saying I won't want to call her every day, and she'll probably die without me, but why ruin something so perfect trying to stay together? — Rob Thomas

I once thought that grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren't just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years. Now I wonder if grief isn't something like a shell. You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you've outgrown it. So you put it down. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

He was the monster that no one thought to look for in the light of day. It was a common mistake. People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety - like light - is a facade. Underneath, the whole world is drenched in darkness. — C.J. Roberts

As he left Yata's home that morning, he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams. For a moment he allowed himself to feel regret at the thought of never building a cottage by the river with Trevanion. Or living the life of a simple farmer connected to the earth. Or traveling his kingdom, satisfying the nomad he had become. To be Finnikin of the Rock and the Monts and the River and the Flatlands and the Forest. To be none of those at all.
Yet he also knew that to lose her to another man would be a slow torture every day for the rest of his life. — Melina Marchetta

My son will forever travel through a moonless night with only the roar of wind for company ... A drowning man is not separated from the lust for air by a bridge of thought - he is one with it - and my son, conceived and grown in an ethanol bath, lives each day in the act of drowning. For him there is no shore. — Michael Dorris

I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age- which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life- and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thoughts and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth. — Adolf Hitler

I guess my parents wasn't f***ing with me being with X. It was more less, they thought that my life was in danger. They felt it was hurting more, then it was helping. So they ended up pulling me out of the deal. It was actually a blessing in disguise because everything worked out for the best at the end of the day. — Yung Berg

I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper - why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water. — Ray Bradbury

It's just ... it's not every day someone comes along willing to take a bullet for your little sister."
I swallow back a laugh, try to lighten the mood. "Nah, I'm sure Hanson would've stepped up."
Daniel rolls his eyes, reaches for his drink. "I hated that kid."
"Jaden thought he was perfect."
"I think Jaden started to see a new kind of perfect when she met you. — Katie Klein

Forbid the day when vivisection shall be practised in every college and school, and when the man of science, looking forth over a world which will then own no other sway than his, shall exult in the thought that he has made of this fair earth, if not a heaven, at least a hell for animals. — Lewis Carroll

All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged
after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot. — Mary Ann Shaffer

I got my deal off MySpace. I wrote to J.R. Rotem. He is big producer. He's done a lot of stuff for Rihanna, 50 Cent, Britney Spears and etc. I thought, "Yo, this guy is really talented I want to work with him." Once I sent him message he didn't reply back. I kept on sending the messages. I kept on hitting him back like eight times a day. He eventually replied back like, "Yo, I want to hear more music." — Sean Kingston

Normal?" he thought, "I have a genie in my closet! There's absolutely nothing normal about that!" "Yes, Mom?" he asked as calmly as he could manage as he opened the door. Stefan's mom looked over his shoulder at the messy room, shook her head slightly and decided to leave that fight for another day. She was here to tell Stefan the truth about the Magical Charms box and hopefully, he would forgive her. It had been an honest mistake after all. As she glanced around the room, Stefan stopped breathing and slowly followed her gaze over to the bed. Oh the relief! His blanket had fallen neatly over the Magical Charms box, completely concealing it. He let his breath out in a loud sigh. "Are you alright, Stefan? — Merriweather Hope

Cinnamon Girl" wasn't right for this day, for this time, for what was about to happen. If he were to have music, he thought, maybe Shostakovich, a few measures from the Lyric Waltz in Jazz Suite Number 2. Something sweet, yet pensive, with a taste of tragedy; Qatar was an intellectual, and he knew his music. — John Sandford

My family went on a cruise, and I got a terrible haircut. FYI: Never get your hair cut on a cruise. And I had, like, this blonde curly 'fro, and I walked into the gym the first day back in seventh grade and everyone was staring at me, and for some reason I thought, I know what I need to do! And I just started sprinting from one end of the gym to the other, and I thought it was hilarious. But nobody else at that age really did. It was genuinely weird — Jennifer Lawrence

She had a dream sometimes that she was running along a road and there was Doll ahead of her, waiting for her, and she just ran into her arms, and she thought, It's over now, I'm not lost anymore, and the dream had all the sweetness of a mild day in summer. If you could smell in dreams, it would be the smell of hay on the softest breeze and sunlight warming the fields. She thought that was going to be waiting for her, that life, and she never even stopped to wonder about herself for thinking that way. I been crazy for a long time, she said. — Marilynne Robinson

He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much.
The sound of their daughters' high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. "Papa, Papa, we want a new game!"
Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude.
Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a new
reason for celebration. — Victoria Lynne

Thought is uncontrollable but controllable. Thought is the pivot of life and the epitome of good or bad living. A controlled thought is a controlled life and an uncontrolled life is an uncontrolled living. Our first and last thoughts from dawn to dusk are of great essence to living a purposeful life. They form a catalyst for a progressive or retrogressive life. What do you think of most before you sleep? What do you ponder upon most upon waking up from bed? The distinctive boundaries to your purposeful day are your first and last thoughts of the day. Remember! the first and the last thoughts. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.
This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought. — William S. Burroughs

For life has worn me down: continual uneasiness, concealment of my knowledge, pretense, fear, a painful straining of all my nerves - not to let down, not to ring out ... and even to this day I still feel an ache in that part of my memory where the very beginning of this effort is recorded, that is, the occasion when I first understood that things which to me had seemed natural were actually forbidden, impossible, that any thought of them was criminal. — Vladimir Nabokov

I thought you weren't allowed to have a phone," he says. "Or was that a really pathetic excuse to avoid giving me your number?"
"I'm not allowed. My best friend gave it to me the other day. It can't do anything but text." He turns the screen around to face me. "What the hell kind
of texts are these?" He turns the phone around and reads one.
"Sky, you are beautiful. You are possibly the most exquisite creature in the universe and if anyone tells you otherwise, I'll cut a bitch." He arches
an eyebrow and looks up at me, then back down to the phone. "Oh, God. They're all like this. Please tell me you don't text these to yourself for daily
motivation. — Colleen Hoover

RVM's Thought for the Day -
There is nobody else on earth like You and Me. Let us be who we are meant to be. — R.v.m.

You go to work, tape five shows in one day and then go home and play golf for the rest of the week and then start the week all over. I thought if something like that came along, I'd love to do that. — Wink Martindale

When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Hallelujah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki had thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day. And then the kid drowned in the Mississippi, recalled Kiki now, looking up from her knees to the colourful painting that hung behind Carlene's empty chair. Jerome had wept: the tears you cry for someone whom you never met who made something beautiful that you loved. Seventeen years earlier, when Lennon died, Kiki had dragged Howard to Central Park and wept while the crowd sang 'All You Need is Love' and Howard ranted bitterly about Milgram and mass psychosis. — Zadie Smith

Having second thoughts?" Puck's voice was soft and dangerous, a far cry from his normal flippancy. "I thought we put this behind us for now."
"Never," I said, matching his stare. "I can't ever take it back, Goodfellow. I'm still going to kill you. I swore to her I would." Lighting flickered overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance as we faced each other with narrowed eyes. "One day," I said softly. "One day you'll look up, and I'll be there. That's the only ending for us. Don't ever forget. — Julie Kagawa

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. — Clarice Lispector

Just for a minute," she said. He's not half bad, she thought, as far as princes go. "Just to watch the sunset," he agreed. He's not half bad, she thought, as far as enemies go. "Just to see the stars," she conceded. This isn't half bad, she thought, as far as wars go. "Just one day," he said. "You promised." And just to take another look at one small photograph hanging on the wall, she thought. Lennox Gates, what is your Siren story? — Kami Garcia

I've always thought New Year's Day was an especially American tradition, full of the optimism and hope we're famous for in our daily lives
an energy and confidence we call the American spirit. Perhaps because we know we control our own destiny, we believe deep down inside that working together we can make each new year better than the old. — Ronald Reagan

Except for when I was very little and thought that being an "engineer" meant he drove a train. Then I imagined him in the seat of an engine car the color of coal, a string of shiny passenger cars trailing behind. One day my father laughed and corrected me. Everything snapped into focus. It's one of those unforgettable moments that happen as a child, when you discover that all along the world has been betraying you. — Nicole Krauss

How you brew your life is how it's gonna taste on your tongue. You have the choice to make it bitter or sweeter. It all depend on the actions that you take day in day out. — Israelmore Ayivor

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. — Edgar Allan Poe

THE INNER HISTORY OF A DAY No one knew the name of this day; Born quietly from deepest night, It hid its face in light, Demanded nothing for itself, Opened out to offer each of us A field of brightness that traveled ahead, Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps And the light of thought to show the way. The mind of the day draws no attention; It dwells within the silence with elegance — John O'Donohue

I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this. — William Boyd

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? — T. S. Eliot

A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked. "I am weeping for my sins," said the lad. "You must have little to do," said the man. The next day, they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you weep now?" asked the man. "I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad. "I thought it would come to that," said the man. — Robert Louis Stevenson

And the more I thought about it, the more I dug out of my memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. In a way, it was an advantage. — Albert Camus

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.
Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn't have a bad set, but it wasn't good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.
Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn't know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.
She said, "You seem distracted."
"Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?"
"So you admit that you are distracted."
"You are a fiend," he said, echoing Ronan's words during the match at Faris's garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, "Ask your question. — Marie Rutkoski

Mike Shea became a medic during the war and was now married, working for Pfizer. To this day he can't look at her straight. To this day she can't quite convince herself that the sin was as grave as it seemed. (She thought, in fact, of telling the priest as he whispered his furious admonitions that she weighed barely a hundred pounds and was as thin as a boy and if he would adjust his imagination accordingly and see the buds of her breasts and her flat stomach and the bony points of her hips, he would understand that even buck naked, her body was not made for mortal sin.) She can — Alice McDermott

And as for the vague something
was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?
that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare
to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature. — Charlotte Bronte

My first day at MGM they decided to bring this lion out, male, and it was not the best time for him to see me. All of a sudden he thought I was in heat and this lion went into the dressing room, which was just a trailer on the sound stage, and went crazy. — Kim Novak

I don't play the lottery. I don't care what my horoscope says. I think most things about the world could be improved if people thought more about what they're doing. When someone gets upset with their computer, I tend to side with the computer. I think art is overrated, and bridges are underrated. In fact, I don't understand why bridges aren't art. It seems to me they're penalized for having a use. If I make a bridge that ends in midair, that's a sculpture. But put it between two landmasses and let it ferry two hundred thousand cars per day and it's infrastructure. That makes no sense. — Max Barry

Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have courage. The whole position of women is what it is to-day, because so many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for. — Winifred Holtby

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee

I rub my hand down my face, frustrated. This girl in front of me tests my patience like hell.
When she ran to me after her dad kicked her out, I thought she still had feelings for me. She needed a place to stay, and I needed her. I offered her a room, thinking if she was around me every day, she would remember she loves me. I was dead wrong. Somewhere along the way, we switched roles, I became the one who so desperately needed her and she became cold and closed off. She isn't my savior; she's my punishment. — Brittany Butler

Live in the moment. Day by day! Tomorrow isnt promised so if you thought about it ... even just for a second ... DO IT! — B.M. Hardin

Sprinting for a full day in Atlanta in midsummer proved very challenging. That humidity is crazy. Georgia is a beautiful state, but the weather is intense. I was warned, but for some reason I thought it would be like L.A. in the summer. The reality? No. — Theo James

At certain epochs, man has felt conscious of something about himself - body and spirit - which was outside the day-to-day struggle for existence and the night-to-night struggle with fear; and he has felt the need to develop these qualities of thought and feeling so that they might approach as nearly as possible to an ideal of perfection - reason, justice, physical beauty, all of them in equilibrium. He has managed to satisfy this need in various ways - through myths, through dance and song, through systems of philosophy and through the order that he has imposed upon the visible world. — Kenneth Clark

In our day, we thought that the bards would sing of us for generations to come, but we did not believe it. But in fact Arthur now occupies a higher throne than he ever did when he was alive. The fragments of all our lives have been put together to form legend. Camelot has become the nursery of Britain: the glorious past that never was and always will be. — Clara Winter

My mother practiced hours every day, hours as painful to hear as to play. At first everybody thought she would give in. Day followed day, and the terrible stumbling sounds went on for hours on end.
She did not know what else to do. — Helen DeWitt

The day after we returned from Iorn Fist I woke up and I want either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman that was too blood thirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to than you for not letting me die. — Michael A. Stackpole

For better or worse, I was my father's son, and I intuited, however unclearly, that my life was inextricably bound up with his. I was who I was because of him. His blood was in my blood, his history was my history. Even my future, the person I might one day become, depended on him, because everything he'd ever seen or done or thought or felt flowed up through him and into me. — George Bishop

I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo. — Elif Batuman

Some day, I must ask him what it's like to be married to someone who, eyes narrowed in thought, peers at him over the tops of sociology articles with titles like "Who Gets the Best Deal from Marriage: Women or Men?" We've had our disagreements, of course. When, for example, are a few dirty cups a symbol of the exertion of male privilege, and when are they merely unwashed dishes? — Cordelia Fine

It was simple. His world was Kate. If he denied that, he might as well stop breathing right now.
"I have to go," he blurted out, standing up so suddenly that his thighs hit the edge of the table, sending walnut shell shards skittering across the tabletop.
"I thought you might," Colin murmured.
Benedict just smiled and said, "Go."
His brothers, Anthony realized, were a bit smarter than they let on.
"We'll speak to you in a week or so?" Colin asked.
Anthony had to grin. He and his brothers had met at their club every day for the past fortnight. Colin's oh-so-innocent query could only imply one thing - that it was obvious that Anthony had completely lost his heart to his wife and planned to spend at least the next seven days proving it to her. And that the family he was creating had grown as important as the one he'd been born into.
"Two weeks," Anthony replied, yanking on his coat. "Maybe three."
His brothers just grinned. — Julia Quinn

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. — Hugh Laurie

I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a recluse. — Leonora Carrington

For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun. — Gary Kemp

It had been a beautiful day for an outdoor ceremony, with the kind of lucid weather she hoped to have at her own funeral. She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this life. For years, acceptance had been her only means of survival. She knew that no matter how miserable or wretched life became, all she could do with her meek piece of time was sustain it. Decades of guilt, lost faith, the betrayal by those few people she'd let herself love - it was worth enduring these things, if only for the gift of a single, exalted moment. And such moments happened, even frequently, in the lives of people wise enough to see them. — Esi Edugyan

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

St. Chrysostom, suffering under the Empress Eudoxia, tells his friend Cyriacus how he armed himself beforehand...."I thought, will she banish me? 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Take away my goods? 'Naked came I into the world, and naked must I return.' Will she stone me? I remembered Stephen. Behead me? John Baptist came into my mind," etc. Thus it should be with every one that intends to live and die comfortably: they must, as we say, lay up something for a rainy day; they must stock themselves with graces, store up promises, and furnish themselves with experiences of God's lovingkindness to others and themselves too, that so, when the evil day comes, they may have much good coming thereby. — John Spencer

RVM's Thought for the Day-Whenever a problem arrives, do three things - Face it, Fight it and Finish it. — R.v.m.

When you are a warrior for your body, you search out every good thing there is to fill it with - every nutrient, every vitamin, every thought, every belief. You love your body, and you thank your body in the morning and bless it throughout the day. — Debbie Ford

The other day I got out the shower and I bend down to reach for a towel, and I felt a sharp pain in my chest. Shot through my chest and up around my shoulder and down my spine. I thought 'Oh, Lord.' I thought I was dying. I bent over and looked, and I was standing on my own titty. — Eddie Murphy

In that instant, your billboard careened ashore on a wall of water, cracking the back of my head. I reached for balance and touched what I thought was a puppy. Then you grabbed my finger. My God, I thought. It's a baby. I fainted dead away. That's how Macon found us the next day - me unconscious on half a billboard, you nestled in my arms, nursing on the pocket of my uniform. The half billboard said: " ... Cafe ... Proprietor." Our path seemed clear.
I will always love your mother for letting you go, Soldier, and I will always love you for holding on.
Love, the Colonel.
PS: I apologize for naming you Moses. I didn't know you were a girl until it was too late. — Sheila Turnage

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! — Annie Dillard

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience.... Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow.... 589 — Anonymous

Every big castle was once started with a single block; despise no small beginnings. A little step taken every day builds up the hope of greater accomplishments. Do something every day! — Israelmore Ayivor

You know that man's story already. He's just starting to believe what Day's been saying to him for years, but he's scared as fuck. If you hurt him in any way, Day will hurt you." Johnson stopped grinning and looked back at God. "I thought Day hated him?" "Day is complex, Johnson. He's crazy about Ronowski, that's why he rides the man so hard." "I get that," Johnson responded. "All right. I don't mind doing the slow thing. We'll start with wings and a game tonight." Johnson shrugged and started inching toward his car. "Next week, maybe dinner and a movie." "Sounds good, bro." God waved and climbed in his truck. Now that he was done playing Chuck Woolery and there were no more love connections to be made. He was going home to his sweetheart. — A.E. Via