What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This
life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain
and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal
hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw
yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I
heard anything more divine'?
May you have just enough clouds in your life to be left with a beautiful sunset.
Well, I must say, that I think it's high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he
was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I, in
any way, approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind
is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the
aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in
your life you will have been all of these.
Sometimes, I think I spend my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in.
Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and
of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which
it bears to them.
The world is full of them, a world of beasts thrusting for one rock.
I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I
try to reach into your page and breathe it back. . . but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a
sack.
Today is made of yesterday.
Then there was life, with its cruel houses, and people who seldom touched - though touch
is all - but I grew, like a pig in a trenchcoat grew, and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison and all of that, saws working through my heart, but
I grew, I grew. I wore rubies and bought tomatoes, and now, in my middle age, about nineteen in
the head I'd say, I am rowing, I am rowing though the oarlocks stick and are rusty and the sea
blinks and rolls like a worried eyeball, but I am rowing, I am rowing, though the wind pushes me
back, and I know that that island will not be perfect, it will have the flaws of life, the
absurdities of the dinner table, but there will be a door and I will open it and I will get rid
of the rat inside of me, the gnawing pestilential rat. God will take it with his two hands and
embrace it.
As the African says: This is my tale which I have told, if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me. This story ends with me still rowing.
The days, like great black oxen, tread the world; God, the herdsman, goads them from
behind. And I am broken by their passing feet.
It doesn't matter if there are wars, the business of life continues, unless you're the one
that gets it. Even without wars, life is dangerous.
All day, I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it. And I wonder about myself,
this dream I'm living. I could eat the sky like an apple, but I'd rather ask the first star:
why am I here? why do I live in this house? who's resposible? eh?
You see, the song is the life, the life I can't live.
Today, life opened inside me like an egg, and there inside, after considerable digging, I
found the answer.
Is life something you play? And all the time wanting to get rid of it? And further,
everyone yelling at you to shut up. And no wonder! People don't like to be told that you're
sick and then be forced to watch you come down with the hammer.
I am out of practice at living.
He has wiped out his eyes in order not to see my inside out, and I am walking and looking,
and this is no dream, just my oily life, where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable
for an entire lifetime.
I shall never know why our lives took a turn for the worse, nor will you.
When I hear somebody say 'Life is hard', I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?'
Don't take life too seriously, it's not like it's permanent.
If life is a performance, and I am not an actor, am I supposed to lie down and die?
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to
take us.
Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
Normally I try to take on one day at a time, but lately several have attacked me at once.
You have not lived until you've found someone worth dying for.
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for mine.
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
I live the way I type - fast and with lots of mistakes.
It isn't as if life is not full of miracles, it's more than that: it is miraculous. And
anyone who stops taking it for granted will see it at once.
Perhaps there's something in every life that needs to stay hidden.
You can't change your life once you've lived it. All you can do is appreciate what you've
had and what you've got.
Life is hard sometimes. It's not easy to be left behind.
We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then
another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when
they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly
be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when
our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice
vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If
not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to
yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred D. Souza.
He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin real life. But there
was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished
business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned
on me that these obstacles were my life." This perspective has helped me to see that there is no
way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have. And treasure
it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time. . . and
remember that time waits for no one. . . So, stop waiting until you finish school, until you go
back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until
your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until
you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home,
until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until
you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a
drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is
no better time than right now to be happy. . .
