This is a list of lines and ideas that I have come across over the past year of so while reading or enjoying a show, words that have inspired me enough to stop and quickly write them down.
- “What is love without risk?”
- “Greed is a bottomless pit that exhausts the heart.”
- “If you never heal from what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
- “Music isn’t just a bunch of black dots on a page or a bunch of random notes that sound good. It’s a story, a moment in time that shouldn’t be taken for granted.”
- “You must not let anyone define your limits because of where you came from. Your only limit is your soul.”
- “Hurting someone’s feelings is as easy as throwing a rock in a river. But do you know how deep the rock will go?”
- “Humans die in pursuit of wealth, just like birds die in pursuit of food.”
- “If their absence brings you peace, you didn’t lose them.”
- “It is the point at which one begins to complain that the real lessons begin!”
- “Faith tells me no matter what lies ahead of me this year, God is already there.”
- “The number of voices weaving a word does not determine its truth.”
- “The master who prefers to drink from a jeweled goblet of their own design over the pinched clay cup of an apprentice holds no love for either.”
- “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
- “Don’t waste your time explaining things to people who only hear what they want to hear.”
- “Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.”
- All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.”
- “Conflict is inevitable, but contention is a choice.”
- “’Love…is not conditional. It is often effortful, sometimes painful. But it is not selfish, or bargaining like a business deal. It is not a formula of owing. Approval or tolerance are not the same as love. Do you understand? You do not need to earn—or even reciprocate, should you not wish to—any of our love for you…It is freely and willingly given, and not dependent on anything you can do for us.’”
- “When you lose your parents, you lose your past. When you lose your spouse, you lose your present. But, when you lose a child, you lose part of your future.”
- “No one can act wisely in the details of life, if the greater purpose of life is still unknown to him.”
- “All cruelty springs from weakness.”
- “It’s easy to dismiss what you can’t comprehend.”
- “Don’t be so caught up in the shadows, that you forget the light that casts them.”
- “Sometimes…the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
- Getting rid of weakness is “the first step to overcome, the foundation of greatness, the stone on which godhood was built. For weakness is the first to sink its claws into the person who had given it life.”
- “Persistent as insects- quick to escape and difficult to eradicate.”
- “People who try to tell me things are ‘not that deep’ fundamentally misunderstand me; I am not a fish desperately in search of the ocean, I am a magpie that roves the canons, searching for shiny things to put in my nest. Whether or not it actually is given deep narrative weight by canon itself is of secondary importance to the fact that it has the potential to be interesting, and thus, I covet it. ‘It’s not that deep’ Maybe not originally, but the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig.”
- “Without fear, there is no courage.”
- “Body in the abyss, heart in paradise.”
- “Funny thing about fear…once you get it under control, you start to wonder why you put so much energy into avoiding certain things.”
- “No one bad is truly bad. And no one good is truly good.”
- “Joy shared is doubled and sorrow shared in halved.”
- “Like a smudge of dirt on a pane of glass, it was not enough to obscure but just enough to hinder the view.”
- “No man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.”
- “He felt more like a catalyst for the act of creation than the creator himself; he felt as though the paint knew where it should go, and only used his hand as a means of getting there.”
- “Things are not perfect between them, but are on the same page at least, and that was always a good place to start.”
- “We say that line[murder] is the one line we can never, ever cross, and as long as we don’t, we’re golden. The truth is that’s a lie. There are plenty of lines we don’t cross, it just never occurs to us that they’re there to begin with. And if you went down that route, you’d be crossing all of them eventually. Even the big one…Think of it this way…When it comes to lines, it isn’t just where you draw the line but also how you draw it. You can make it a hard, solid line and when you cross it, you cross it — no question about it. You live with it, carry it, and if you feel remorseful, you try to make up for it for the rest of your life. Or…you can make it into a circle, one that shrinks the more you walk around it, until it’s so small you can step on it and pretend it’s not there. And once that happens, there’s nothing telling you to stop — so why should you?”
- “despite contrary belief, very rarely is there a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice. Usually, there are only choices and consequences. Whether those consequences are good or bad is up to interpretation. Accept your choices. Accept that you cannot change them. And learn from them. What is done is done. All we can do is move on with our lives, as we see fit.”
- “And the truth is, the reason why is because I’m jaded. So, so jaded. My childhood, my death, all of it makes it harder for me to see the good. I know that it’s there, and I find it, but—well, it never gleamed for me the same way it did for you.”
- “The remarkable thing about living was that the fount of discovery was endless.”
- “‘Who we are, our sense of self, is determined by two things. Merely existing is not enough. We need time, and others. Your understanding of who you are is developed by how others view you, and how you compare to others. It’s also developed by the flow of time, and the experiences you gather naturally as time passes. But it’s not enough to know that something happened, because who you are today is not who you were yesterday. So the same event will not be the same experience, it won’t mean the same thing, if it occurs at different points in your life.’…’In that sense, our lives are like a necklace. It wouldn’t be the same necklace if the beads were in a different order, would it?'”
- “Gold is valuable precisely because it cannot tarnish, no matter how long it’s left uncared for.”
- “Well, it’s almost never really completely dark. Human eyes just aren’t that great at taking advantage of what light there is.”
- “The World doesn’t turn just by using proper methods and following the path of moral righteousness. Reality isn’t the same as a Fairytale.”
- “So, after all, there was not one kind of strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the others is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honor due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and out his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel. Perses, lay up these things in your heart, and do not let the Strife who delights in mischief hold your heart back from work, while you peek and peer and listen to the wrangles of the court-house.”
- “Don’t forsake yourself before anyone else has ever given up on you. If you do, you really will be alone someday.”
- “It is a sad fate for a man to die too well-known to everybody else and still unknown to himself.”
- “The mirror always shows the truth. But, the heart of the viewer distorts it.”
- “Empathy is not endorsement. It is seeing the humanity in someone who lives a different life than you do.”
- “If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.”
- “There is great power in being the calm at the center of the storm. A beacon to show the way.”
- “Fear can create monsters where there never were ones before.”
- “You can’t change people. But you can appeal to who they are.”
- “The world is full of cowards too immature to understand what they aren’t willing to learn, remember that.”
- “It’s amazing what you can get done, if you don’t need to take the credit.”
Seeking After Knowledge 