We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it, and hold it forever inaccessible. ("I love you," someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder - "Well, how much?" - and when the answer comes - "with my whole heart" - we then wonder about the wholeness of the a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands, our fathers, our gods - they are all beyond us.
Tim O'Brien
Related We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hyp... TIM O'BRIEN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th... GARY F EVANS... Everything passes by, and we are left with just our memories BEN OAK Don't you ever wonder why we say we're giving someone our heart and not our liver or some other orga... JOY MANISCALCO A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Air is approximately 21% oxygen, our brains feed off of oxygen. So basically we are all airheads. ANDONI GARCIA Inspired By Beauty In Creation We Are One DANIEL GILMAN Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ... THOMAS HARRIS To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our... ALAIN DE BOTTON That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it. EMINEM We should not blame people by the mistakes of others. DANIEL MELGAçO We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live. The universe may for... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON I thank God for schools that are serious about the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are vital to perpetu... JAMES C. DOBSON If we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack. CRAIG GROESCHEL There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so muc... MURIEL BARBERY We all have thorns in our flesh. All of us. Love is when we stay and help someone pluck out their th... C. JOYBELL C. Our country is the world, our countrymen all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we l... WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON The search for meaning in our lives takes us on paths large and small. When we go beyond ourselves-w... ALEX PATTAKOS Convinced that we're living the whole time that we're dying. We decide to go out walking the wh... TEGAN QUIN Most of all, we remain focused on our Rock that never moves. CRAIG GROESCHEL I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you... NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you... NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever. SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON We killed you and it was not new for us, we killed the companions of the Prophet and the friends of ... نزار قباني If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y... GARY F EVANS... The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS It’s a wonder of human behavior: we build our own handcuffs that trap and harm us. We create the m... RAIF BADAWI Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mir... CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN If we are serious about dreaming our awakening into being and creating a peaceful, loving earth in w... DIANE HALL All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe... PETER DAVID Our heart calls us one way, the mind pulls us the other way, and we do the opposite. We cannot find ... DRAGOS BRATASANU When we are doing that which makes our heart sing, we feel upbeat & energised about our lives. We be... SAMANTHA FARRUGIA Technology has forever changed the world we live in. We're online, in one way or another, all da... JAMES COMEY I wonder how it is that we are all connected despite our tremendous differences. SARAH RUHL Part of what drives us to explore and discover is the intangible: expanding our horizons, feeding ou... NANCY ATKINSON Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often no... ANTHONY TROLLOPE Plato claimed that we were all joined to someone else once, we were humans with four arms and four l... SARAH CROSSAN Third-level, life-long relationships are generally few because “their existence implies that those... MARIANNE WILLIAMSON And if we ask how are we to know where our hearts are, the answer is just as simple - everything whi... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER I would agree with your statement that many of my protagonists are outsiders. I wonder if we all are... DAVID MITCHELL Never let us be discouraged with ourselves; it is not when we are conscious of our faults that we ar... FRANÇOIS FÉNÉLON Some we proudly display on our arms, while others we shyly conceal. Tattoo the moments of sorrow as ... FORREST CURRAN The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w... GABRIELLE ZEVIN Our souls yearn for connection with all souls. There are people we think we prefer and others we don... ALEXANDRA KATEHAKIS Let us know our differences! Let us understand our differences! Let us know and understand that we a... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. S... CESAR CHAVEZ The more we give, the more we reap the benefits of feeling good in helping others. We are all capabl... ANGIE KARAN The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness was an opportunity for a lost and selfis... DEAN KOONTZ We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no su... KAHLIL GIBRAN Something ancient in us bends us toward the origins of the whole thing. We either drown in the split... MICHAEL MEADE As I look back on all that's happened..growing up, growing together, changing you, changing me -- th... NEIL GAIMAN All of us have schnozzles . . . if not in our faces, then in our character, minds or habits. When we... JIMMY DURANTE We have needed to define ourselves by reclaiming the words that define us. They have used language a... SELMA JAMES Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympat... PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY You to the left and I to the right,
For the ways of men must sever--
And it may be for a day a... RICHARD HOVEY So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to... STEPHEN CHBOSKY But even a vessel pulsates, beats and pumps in ecstasy and in rage! I wonder are the way ... QUIETSTORMPOET The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And yes, there are certainly times... ELIZABETH EDWARDS In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak... ALAIN DE BOTTON Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond meas... MARYANNE WILLIAMSON When we are at the worst times of our lives, when we are battling with something, or struggles, what... RUSSELL WILSON We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, a... PEMA CHöDRöN Sometimes all we need to soothe our soul and ease our burdens is the loving hand of a friend gently ... MIMI NOVIC Always Be Ready For Anything that Comes: Bananas, Chips, College, an Opportunity, so when it does yo... DANIEL OJEDA I wonder, where are you? ... Beyond loyalty to the process of law, how do you view this law when it ... DICK DURBIN We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are ... ERIC HOFFER All love is bittersweet. Love is inexplicable; it is part poetry and part masochism. Part of love is... KILROY J. OLDSTER We learn that our spirit is not apart from us; it is a part of us. We gain awareness of the exact na... NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS We need to cease allowing the past to define us. We are evolving as a human race, and just because w... ALARIC HUTCHINSON Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As ch... JULIA CAMERON Eventually, we reach the point where we start to realize that we are not going to find peace, conten... GUY FINLEY When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. OSCAR WILDE When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers. OSCAR WILDE The same God who loves us as we are also loves us to much to leave us as we are. Perhpas because we ... JOSEPH LANGFORD Poseidon put his weathered hand on my shoulder. “Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in t... RICK RIORDAN The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immen... CARL SAGAN Breast cancer is not just a disease that strikes at women. It strikes at the very heart of who we ar... DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ Women matter. Women are half of us. When you raise every woman to believe that we are insignificant,... LINDY WEST You certainly believe in the power of love. And throughout the series, you see how love shows itself... MOUTASEM ALGHARATI The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have. CRAIG GROESCHEL They say, and I have reason to believe, that in times of intellectual laziness we are at our most ge... LAMPOONTOP'S 1925 AUTOBIOGRAPHICA They say, and I have reason to believe, that in times of intellectual laziness we are at our most ge... LAMPOONTOP'S 1925 AUTOBIOGRAPHICA It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When... THOMAS MERTON When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing. A... SHERMAN ALEXIE If the seed doesn't get planted, it can't become a toxic thornbush. We must guard our minds and our ... CRAIG GROESCHEL . . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves... AUDRE LORDE Feast of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Teacher, 1153 Commemoration of William & Catherine Booth, Fou... BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ... RALPH WALDO EMERSON What does our way of caring for others look like? Do we check our schedules first or do we get out o... ANITA PLESSIS What does our way of caring for others look like? Do we check our schedules first or do we get out o... ANITA DU PLESSIS When we work creatively and productively with others, our experience of meaning can be profound. Whe... ALEX PATTAKOS But in another way, community is a terrible place. It is the place where our limitations and our ego... JEAN VANIER We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields ... PAT CONROY We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our lo... DIANE FROLOV AND ANDREW SCHNEIDER We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, wort... E.E. CUMMINGS We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, wort... E. E. CUMMINGS Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we... RALPH WALDO EMERSON
More Tim O'Brien
They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy... TIM O'BRIEN That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the tr... TIM O'BRIEN I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of t... TIM O'BRIEN you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care... TIM O'BRIEN It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange... TIM O'BRIEN ...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe... TIM O'BRIEN But this too is true: stories can save us. TIM O'BRIEN They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th... TIM O'BRIEN When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co... 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DYLAN O'BRIEN The perfect date is the one where anything and everything goes wrong, but at the end of it, all you ... DYLAN O'BRIEN Part of growing up is realizing you learn to love so many people. It's about forming those relat... DYLAN O'BRIEN You don't disrupt genius at work. DYLAN O'BRIEN I might be celibate, but I appreciate the wonder of the sacrament of marriage. KEITH O'BRIEN And so I write. I write my life. I write to escape real life. I write to live moments over again. I ... R.B. O'BRIEN We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moo... FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to ... ROBERT C. O'BRIEN There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were ab... ROBERT C. O'BRIEN Still, it seemed to us that the main reason we were hated must be that we always lived by stealing. ... ROBERT C. 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O'BRIEN Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration ... MICHAEL D. O'BRIEN Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way t... FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN He hoped and feared,' continued Solon, in a low. mournful voice; 'but at times he was very miserable... FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN Dream hard. Work harder. Shine. CARAGH M. O'BRIEN Now I really have it all. I've been given some bullshit in my time, but that.... TIM O'ROURKE The nice thing about twitter is the architecture of visibility. Email is invisible unless you reach ... TIM O'REILLY I am one and when I am one I am none, and when I am none I have won. JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive a... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whol... FRANK O'CONNOR We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers... ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I ... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Virtue should always be colmingled with humor. PATRICK O'BRIAN One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silenc... JOHN O'DONOHUE In yourself right now is all the place you've got. FLANNERY O'CONNOR [H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes ... JENNY O'CONNELL Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - t... SEáN O'CASEY The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. FLANNERY O'CONNOR If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church t... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Chris... FLANNERY O'CONNOR We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You... STEWART O'NAN All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. SEáN O'CASEY Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. “So he’s been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued... MICHELLE O'LEARY She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her th... MICHELLE O'LEARY I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me. DANIEL O'MALLEY Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. FLANNERY O'CONNOR Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and ... JOHN O'DONOHUE They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest. LOUISE O'NEILL I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance ... PETER O'TOOLE Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes. Joy arises from being with wha... MARY O'MALLEY It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice but the things you say. It's not th... IAN O'SHEA You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. Y... STEWART O'NAN They should." "Should be like a wood bee," she said. It was a private joke, a ... STEWART O'NAN The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love? STEWART O'NAN Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't s... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a const... FLANNERY O'CONNOR People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween cand... HEATHER O'NEILL Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. P.J. O'ROURKE Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your... PEGGY O'MARA Marry for love. But also choose to marry a man or woman who you love that treats you with the ultima... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There will be a time when love is beautiful and passionate and nothing else will exist but you and t... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed w... JOHN O'DONOHUE [I suspect] that in the drive toward the liberal universalist notion of human rights that characteri... DARREN O'DONNELL All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and hon... JOHN O'DONOHUE If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you VINCENT O'SULLIVAN We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where ... JOHN O'DONOHUE To love without ownership, to love with total trust and faith in that very love, to love with the sa... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR My feeling on the subject of sex with a man is - don't give it up unless you're willing to give him ... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Life is surreal. When you step back and really take a look at it, the irony is absolute. JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Ladies, you have a ton of power if you just understand the fundamental differences between men and w... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me. SEáN O'CASEY You cannot borrow half of who you are from someone else, yet people try to do it all of the time, th... JENNIFER O'NEILL For Equilibrium, a Blessing: Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, May the relief ... JOHN O'DONOHUE Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, a... ROSIE O'DONNELL It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or ... EUGENE O'NEILL It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, ... JOHN O'DONOHUE The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of sh... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your ... JOHN O'DONOHUE The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness. JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortio... JOHN O'DONOHUE Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are ... JOHN O'DONOHUE We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us. JOHN O'DONOHUE Beauty is the illumination of your soul. JOHN O'DONOHUE Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship i... JOHN O'DONOHUE When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you.... JOHN O'DONOHUE No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entr... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the ... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore... JOHN O'DONOHUE If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it w... JOHN O'DONOHUE Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of... JOHN O'DONOHUE All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and... JOHN O'DONOHUE You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthful... JOHN O'DONOHUE Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. JOHN O'DONOHUE