Cloud (CB) > Cloud's Quotes

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

“But love flowed into the apology, to coddle and mollify the guilt.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

“Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’
‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

“You have, to dream things out. It keeps a kind of an ideal before you. You see it first in your mind and then you set about to try and make it like the ideal. If you want a garden,—why, I guess you've got to dream a garden.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“Plato, or Why

For unclear reasons
under unknown circumstances
Ideal Being ceased to be satisfied.

It could have gone on forever,
hewn from darkness, forged from light,
in its sleepy gardens above the world.

Why on earth did it start seeking thrills
in the bad company of matter?

What use could it have for imitators,
inept, ill-starred,
lacking all prospects for eternity?

Wisdom limping
with a thorn stuck in its heel?
Harmony derailed
by roiling waters?
Beauty
holding unappealing entrails
and Good —
why the shadow
when it didn’t have one before?

There must have been some reason,
however slight,
but even the Naked Truth, busy ransacking
the earth’s wardrobe,
won’t betray it.

Not to mention, Plato, those appalling poets,
litter scattered by the breeze from under statues,
scraps from that great Silence up on high.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog: New Poems

“You have to dream things out. It keeps a kind of an ideal before you. You see it first in your mind and then you set about to try to make it like the ideal. If you want a garden,-why, I guess you've got to dream a garden.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, Lantern in Her Hand

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Learning

After some time, you learn the subtle difference between
holding a hand
and imprisoning a soul;
You learn that love does not equal sex,
and that company does not equal security,
and you start to learn….
That kisses are not contracts and gifts are not promises,
and you start to accept defeat with the head up high
and open eyes,
and you learn to build all roads on today,
because the terrain of tomorrow is too insecure for plans…
and the future has its own way of falling apart in half.

And you learn that if it’s too much
even the warmth of the sun can burn.

So you plant your own garden and embellish your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring flowers to you.

And you learn that you can actually bear hardship,
that you are actually strong,
and you are actually worthy,
and you learn and learn…and so every day.

Over time you learn that being with someone
because they offer you a good future,
means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past.

Over time you comprehend that only who is capable
of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you
can bring you all happiness.

Over time you learn that if you are with a person
only to accompany your own solitude,
irremediably you’ll end up wishing not to see them again.

Over time you learn that real friends are few
and whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later,
will find himself surrounded only with false friendships.

Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of anger
continue hurting throughout a lifetime.

Over time you learn that everyone can apologize,
but forgiveness is an attribute solely of great souls.

Over time you comprehend that if you have hurt a friend harshly
it is very likely that your friendship will never be the same.

Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends,
you cry for those you let go.

Over time you realize that every experience lived,
with each person, is unrepeatable.

Over time you realize that whoever humiliates
or scorns another human being, sooner or later
will suffer the same humiliations or scorn in tenfold.

Over time you learn to build your roads on today,
because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist.

Over time you comprehend that rushing things or forcing them to happen
causes the finale to be different form expected.

Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future,
but the moment you were living just that instant.

Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you,
you’ll yearn for those who walked away.

Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness,
say you love, say you miss, say you need,
say you want to be friends, since before
a grave, it will no longer make sense.

But unfortunately, only over time…”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.”
― George Carlin

“Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the
loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's
snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely
changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to
play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the
end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off
behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday.
Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness...
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost.
Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can
disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as
we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads
attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to
bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them
closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives
are fleeting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The cloud is free only to go with the wind. The rain is free only in falling.”
― Wendell Berry

“The seasons do not push one another; neither do clouds race the wind across the sky. All things happen in their own good time.”
― Dan Millman

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.”
― Alain De Botton, Status Anxiety

“I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.”
― Sarah Teasdale

“If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama, The Dhammapada

“Alone or not, you gotta walk forward.”
― Cecelia Ahern (Author)

“It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
― Aldous Huxley , Island