Djuna Barnes Quotes

I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life.

We are not social workers. We are contemplatives in the heart of the world.

You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

You have to climb to reach a deep thought.

You're not going to be different ... you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you.

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be.

The body is what reminds us on a daily basis that we're human. The body defies us, it betrays us, we have to struggle with it, you know. And it reveals in curious and in abiding ways how we are not perfect.

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

I learned the hard way that not only do you not have to be superwoman, but it's better not to be and not to try to be. What I would like to be is just a good person - someone who tries her best and puts her best foot forward.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

The soul is the weariest part of the body.

How small we humans are. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.

There was something sweet in watching him pull himself back together, restoring the façade he wore for the world while I knew at least a little of the man beneath it.

Jihad is nothing but making efforts to realise goodness in life.

Effort is between you and you.

Substance should outweigh perfection.

Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.

Man must strive, and striving he must err.

Many a standing ovation has been caused by someone jumping to his feet in an effort to beat the rest of the audience to the parking lot.

You can’t jump for the stars if your feet hurt.

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

By the flaws in the picture the truth will emerge.

There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.