Titik Pulang Quotes & Sayings

What is it that makes all of us end each day with the sense that we have not lived our time, but have been lived, used by what we do? — Jacob Needleman

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Their [cats] effortless passing between the wild and domestic worlds suggests the kind of grace we need as a species to move between nature and culture. — Richard Mabey

The liberal arts are the arts of communication and thinking. 'They are the arts indispensable to further learning, for they are the arts of reading, writing, speaking, listening, figuring, — Oliver DeMille

Oh, she was a crazy woman, privately. — Elizabeth Strout

Who I am is not the same minute to minute or day to day. There are far too many variables for that to ever be true, for me, or for anyone. — Dan Pearce

Grove giveth and Gates taketh away. — Robert Metcalfe

Mornings are mysteries; the first world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud
Shroud in their births. — Henry Vaughan