Aslı > Aslı's Quotes

“Boredom is the most sublime of all human
emotions because it expresses the fact that
the human spirit, in a certain sense,
is greater than the entire universe.
Boredom is an expression of a profound despair
at not finding anything that can satisfy the
soul's boundless needs”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“For if life, once empty of attachments
and sweet illusions, is a starless winter night,
still it’s enough for me of mortal fate
and comfort and revenge that I can lie here
lazy, lifeless on the grass,
watching the sea and earth and sky, and smile.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”
― Gibran Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if to love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; to rest at noon and meditate love's ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude; and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
― Suzy Kassem

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“Wild woman are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are to everyone they meet.
If you have met one, hold on to her, she'll allow you into her chaos but she'll also show you her magic.”
― Nikki Rowe

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
― Plato

“Freedom is the dream you dream
While putting thought in chains again --”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

“Fall in love
with the energy
of the mornings

trace your fingers
along the lull
of the afternoons

take the spirit
of the evenings
in your arms
kiss it deeply

and then
make love
to the tranquility
of the nights.”
― Sanober Khan

“Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom.

Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace”
― Dean Koontz, The Good Guy

“I'm one of my sensations.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“I’d like to have enough time and quiet
To think about absolutely nothing,
To not ever feel myself living,
To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“It’s stranger than every strangeness
And the dreams of all the poets
And the thoughts of all the philosophers,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there’s nothing to understand.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“To love is to think.
And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her.
I don’t know what I want at all, even from her, and I don’t think about anything but her.
I have a great animated distraction.
When I want to meet her,
I almost feel like not meeting her,
So I don’t have to leave her afterwards.
And I prefer thinking about her, because it’s like I’m afraid of her.
I don’t know what I want at all, and I don’t want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her.
I’m asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think.”
― Alberto Caeiro, O Pastor Amoroso

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.”
― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I don't care to be pretty," Blue shot back hotly, "I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King