Occasional Quotes - Page 5

• Studying with a teacher doesn't simply mean going to an occasional seminar or Zen retreat. It means fully applying yourself to what the teacher says, most of which is not verbal.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhist, Mean

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• Some [intentional communities], like the Shakers and the Harmony Society, have endured for a century or even longer. The Hutterians, to cite an extreme example, are today still strongly committed to communal living after practicing it, punctuated only by occasional lapses into private enterprise, for 450 years. The Hutterian rate of membership turnover has been only about 0.0006 per year.

  Benjamin Zablocki

  Years, Community, Membership

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• A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene.

  Augustus William Hare

  Beautiful, Distance, Sight

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.8

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• the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.

  Gene Stratton-Porter

  Sound, Swamps, Migration

  Gene Stratton-Porter (2017). “The Song of the Cardinal”, p.6, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Nothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge cake.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Reading, Cake, Soul

  Thomas Wentworth HIGGINSON (1854). “Woman and her Wishes, etc. ... Second edition, with an appendix”, p.7

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• The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.

  Octavia Butler

  Writing, Character, People

  "Unseen Octavia E Butler stories recovered" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2014.

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• In the midst of the complexities of modern life, with all its pressures, the spirit of man needs to refresh itself by communion with unspoiled nature. In such surroundings- occasional as our visits may be- we can achieve that kind of physical and spiritual renewal that comes alone from the wonder of the natural world.

  Laurance Rockefeller

  Spiritual, Men, Needs

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• Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.

  George Santayana

  Insanity, Madness, Wonderful

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.6, Рипол Классик

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• Like cars, every relationship requires a bit of an occasional service, and fine-tuning should be compulsory.

  Mariella Frostrup

  Car, Tuning, Fine

  "Should I break up with my long-term friend?" by Mariella Frostrup, www.theguardian.com. June 02, 2013.

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• In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights.

  Erik Fosnes Hansen

  Dream, Block, Night

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• Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.

  Tad Williams

  Honor, Dishonor, Disguise

  Tad Williams (1998). “Otherland: City of Golden Shadow”, p.235, Penguin

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• Bin Laden was 200 miles away from the area where all of these drone strikes were taking out his key leaders in al-Qaida. He was able to indulge in his hobbies... He was making occasional video tapes and audio tapes for release to the wider world.

  Peter Bergen

  Indulge In, Keys, Leader

  "The 'Manhunt' To Capture Osama Bin Laden". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. May 1, 2012.

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• Hitler ... lacked the [inclination] for anything more than the occasional sensational display of emotion, in particular the great set-piece speech which mesmerized the mob and left him drained of ... energy.

  John Keegan

  Energy, Pieces, Speech

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• I am committed to writing appropriate books for the middle grades. This means no bad language, no gratuitous or explicit violence, and no sexual content beyond what you might find in a PG-rated movie – expressions of who likes whom, holding hands, and perhaps the occasional kiss. The idea that we should treat sexual orientation itself as an adults-only topic, however, is absurd. Non-heterosexual children exist. To pretend they do not, to fail to recognize that they have needs for support and validation like any child, would be bad teaching, bad writing, and bad citizenship.

  Rick Riordan

  Children, Book, Teaching

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• Poets suffer occasional delusions of angelhood and find themselves condemned to express it in the bric-a-brac tongues of the human world. Lots of them go mad.

  Glen Duncan

  Mad, Suffering, World

  Glen Duncan (2007). “I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story”, p.9, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Somewhere in the infinite that He occupies, God advances and withdraws the pawns of the other games He plays, but it is too soon to worry about this one, all He need do for the present is allow things to take their natural course, apart from the occasional adjustment with the tip of His little finger to make sure some stray thought or action does not interfere with the harmony of destinies.

  Jose Saramago

  Destiny, Games, Play

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• Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.

  Gore Vidal

  Weed, Flower, Criticism

  Gore Vidal (1968). “Sex, Death, and Money”

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• Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes.

  Hal Borland

  Autumn, Light, Glowing

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• I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.

  Robertson Davies

  Vacation, Days Off, Week

  Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

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• Yoga is the rule book for playing the game of Life, but in this game no one needs to lose. It is tough, and you need to train hard. It requires the willingness to think for yourself, to observe and correct, and to surmount occasional setbacks. It demands honesty, sustained application, and above all love in your heart.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Honesty, Yoga, Book

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.16, Rodale

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• Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

  Glen Duncan

  Life, Doe, Plot

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• Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

  Alain de Botton

  Summer, Berries, Might

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.27, Penguin UK

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• Hey listen -- I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.

  Woody Allen

  Hey, Littles, Pay

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• In Heaven all reviews will be favorable; here on earth, the publisher realizes, plausibility demands an occasional bad one, some convincing lump in all that leaven, and he accepts it somewhat as a theologian accepts Evil.

  Randall Jarrell

  Evil, Heaven, Demand

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Contemporary Poetry Criticism" (p. 59), 1980.

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• The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature. The reasons for such addiction are so many that I suspect they are never the same in any two cases. It includes passion but does not survive by passion; it has its whiffs of the agreeable vertigo of young love, but it is stable more often than dizzy; it is a growing, changing thing, and it is tactful enough to give the addicted parties occasional rests from strong and exhausting feeling of any kind.

  Robertson Davies

  Strong, Party, Passion

  "The Pleasures of Love". Book by Robertson Davies, 1961.

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