Samantha Rose Alastriona > Samantha's Quotes

“Maybe god was not found alone on our knees in submission but rather upright in pain, shoulder to shoulder as conduits of love, together in the terrible beauty of human experience. Perhaps god was found in the confluence of love and pain.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“Love is light—only fully realized when it is reflected. It was never meant to be kept.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“Sadness humbles. It cracks us open, allowing us to see others’ pain in ways that happiness can’t. It teaches us about the universality of suffering, but more importantly, the transcendent power of love.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“Slow and steady deposits,” I whispered in Rivs’s ear after Sam left the room, restating the training mantra Rivs had repeated over the years as he conditioned his mind and body to endure extremes and weather the unfathomable.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“How tragic it is to know we see others best through pain.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“How liberating it is to be water, fluid and pervious, to flow like love itself—to accept and allow the things we cannot change while moving forward, with love, in the ways we can.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“both divinity and humanness are found in feeling everything all at once.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“Maybe this was life in essence, time in its shrouded malleability. All of life was a microcosmic round as the universe begged me to listen to its only message, none of it matters but love. How you learn this, be it through religion, science, psychedelics, meditation, physical exertion, service, or pain, is secondary to arriving here, at the point.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once: A Memoir

“I hadn’t yet learned of the space between childhood faith and adolescent knowing, when we are still anchored to parents who try to stem the tide of growing up. Desperate to keep us safe they dam us in black and white, to stave off the treacherous river of gray. But when a child reckons innocence with reality, the flood is sometimes irreparable. The lever breaks and we are swept downstream. We grope for dry land, trying to make sense of a world that does not carry us as swiftly as we were once taught. We tear at the banks between innocence and truth, desperate for the bridge only to find that there are no square angles. No straight lines across. It all just bends.”
― Stephanie Catudal, Everything All at Once

“We practically always excuse things when we understand them”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“Yes, such has been my lot since childhood. Everyone read signs of non-existent evil traits in my features. But since they were expected to be there, they did make their appearance. Because I was reserved, they said I was sly, so I grew reticent. I was keenly aware of good and evil, but instead of being indulged I was insulted and so I became spiteful. I was sulky while other children were merry and talkative, but though I felt superior to them I was considered inferior. So I grew envious. I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate. My cheerless youth passed in conflict with myself and society, and fearing ridicule I buried my finest feelings deep in my heart, and there they died. I spoke the truth, but nobody believed me, so I began to practice duplicity. Having come to know society and its mainsprings, I became versed in the art of living and saw how others were happy without that proficiency, enjoying for free the favors I had so painfully striven for. It was then that despair was born in my heart--not the despair that is cured with a pistol, but a cold, impotent desperation, concealed under a polite exterior and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple; I had lost one half of my soul, for it had shriveled, dried up and died, and I had cut it off and cast it away, while the other half stirred and lived, adapted to serve every comer. No one noticed this, because no one suspected there had been another half. Now, however, you have awakened memories of it in me, and what I have just done is to read its epitaph to you. Many regard all epitaphs as ridiculous, but I do not, particularly when I remember what rests beneath them.”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“I was modest--they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil--nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy--other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them--but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world--none understood me: and I learned to hate.”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Who, being loved, is poor?”
― Oscar Wilde

“Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good. It’s ridiculous to imagine that people can be taught to be good…Art can only give food – a jolt – the occasion – for psychical experience.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part.
What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has not to do with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression.' Self-expression if meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”
― Cervantes, Don Quixote

“Hunger is the best sauce in the world.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote