26 Quotes Tagged: things

My interest in “issues” is merely to point out how badly we’re doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in low they “ought to be.

All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly.

The things you do for yourself are gone when you're gone, but the things you do for others become legacy.What do you wanna be remembered as?

There was a period when I believed stuff meant something. I thought that if you had matching side chairs and a sofa that harmonized and some beautiful lamps to light them you would have a home, that elegance signaled happiness.

If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.

It's nice to have things to look forward to.

Sometimes we can't find the thing that will make us happy, because we can't let go of the thing that was supposed to.

Things have their time, even eminence bows to timeliness.

I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.

It’s strange how things can change back as suddenly as they changed originally. When one thing happens and suddenly, things are back to normal.

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

"Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.

When there is both name and reality,
We dwell in the realm of things;
When there is neither name nor reality,
We exist in a vacuity of things.
We can speak and can think,
But the more we speak, the further off we are.
What is not yet born cannot be forbidden,
What is already dead cannot be prevented.
Death and birth are not distant,
It's their principle that cannot be seen.

The greatest victory in life is to rise above the material things that we once valued most.

To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things.