Quotes and contemplations

[autographedcat]

I keep a quotes file. I've kept a quotes file since I was in college, although my original one was in a notebook and got lost in the fire, so the one I have currently only dates back a few years. In it, I note things that strike me as either funny or profound. Some of them are from famous people, but many of them are just things that see in the course of reading Livejournal or Usenet or mailing lists or whatever i happen to be perusing.

Sometimes, I go through it to see what jumps out at me, and then I ponder that for a while. It's a good way of focusing my mind, and sometimes I'll find that something hits me with a different or deeper meaning than it did when I first selected it.



"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Henry David Thoreau

"Love hurts. Not loving kills."
--Mike Whitaker (fleetfootmike)

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
--Anais Nin

"Love is something you do, not something you feel."
--Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher)

"It's a dangerous life, and none of us gets out of it alive. I weigh my fears against my joys, and try to make sure the latter tip the balance."
--Pat Kight (kightp)

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
--Agnes de Mille

"We live in a world where joy is possible, love is possible, happiness is possible; where all things are possible, if we're willing to take the time, take a chance, take a breath and step off the edge of everything that is for the sake of everything that might be."
--Seanan McGuire (cadhla)

Comments

[deborah_c]

Thank you... although... *cries*

I'm not entirely sure that the RLP quote, on the other hand, doesn't in some ways say the opposite to the others. It's either in vehement agreement, or diametrically opposed, I think.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I don' think it does. Of course, not all of these quotes are reflecting the same things. Nothing is binary, and everything has facets.

Ultimately, though, I agree with Rev. Atkinson. Love is an action, not an emotion. Just feeling isn't enough. You must put that feeling into motion, vest it in all your thoughts and deeds, or it doesn't really *mean* anything.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

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Love is both a noun and a verb. As a feeling it's a noun, a thing and as an action it's a verb. And sometimes the only thing you can do with love is to keep it from the person loved because they would be hurt by it...

[deborah_c]

Having had a little time to myself to think while avoiding being around people this afternoon, it strikes me that love is both, really. But what if it's there as an action, but without the emotion part? Not feeling in love, but still acting it out? Does that still constitute love, I wonder?

And, of course, there's then the reciprocal side of it. If someone still acts out (some of) the things they did out of love, should one feel loved? Even if the emotional part is absent?

Meh.