Some of my favorite lines from the works of my favorite writers.
Paulo Coelho
"What is the real I? It's what you are, not what others make of you."
"A man has to choose. This is where lies his strength: in the power of his decisions."
"Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience."
"You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen."
"When there is no turning back, then we should concern ourselves only with the best way of going forward."
"An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely."
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.”
“A warrior of light who trusts too much in his intelligence will end up underestimating the power of his opponent.”
Mitch Albom
"Learn to detach. Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That's how you are able to leave it. Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."
"But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."
“You have to work at creating your own culture.”
“People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does.”
"As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."
Dan Brown
"Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true."
"Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom."
"Smart people don't have the luxury of playing stupid."
"Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer."
"Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us."
"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand."
“That is the definition of faith -- acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”
“Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problem arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”
Paulo Coelho
"What is the real I? It's what you are, not what others make of you."
"A man has to choose. This is where lies his strength: in the power of his decisions."
"Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience."
"You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen."
"When there is no turning back, then we should concern ourselves only with the best way of going forward."
"An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely."
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.”
“A warrior of light who trusts too much in his intelligence will end up underestimating the power of his opponent.”
Mitch Albom
"Learn to detach. Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That's how you are able to leave it. Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."
"But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."
“You have to work at creating your own culture.”
“People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does.”
"As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."
Dan Brown
"Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true."
"Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom."
"Smart people don't have the luxury of playing stupid."
"Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer."
"Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us."
"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand."
“That is the definition of faith -- acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”
“Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problem arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”
