Amanda Hocking Quotes

I feel like, for me, reading Thomas Merton is like “Wait a minute, this is a rabbit hole. This isn’t a gateway or a ticket to anything except itself”. When you're a ways into it, you're five pages in, 20 pages in, 30 pages in, it seems like one of the more oxymoronic undertakings you could attempt.

I think there's an appetite for seriousness. Seriousness is voluptuous, and very few people have allowed themselves the luxury of it.

If you've never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.

I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.

My father liked to moralize, and so do I. But he was in earnest, while I am embarrassed and pretend that I am merely being witty.

The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

I was a poet animated by philosophy, not a philosopher with poetic faculties.

I think this is one of those issues where the deeper you dig, the murkier it gets - and everyone who has spent a lot of time thinking about these issues.

Before you go further, let me tell you what a poem brings, first, you must know the secret, there is no poem to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries.

Most people, I believe, when they're asked profound questions about their own persona are not really able to enunciate it, because it's a combination of so many things.

I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.

Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception – especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far to relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.

To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.

All seemingly profound thinking which passes for realism, because it conveniently does away with all troublesome principles, has agreat attraction for the adolescent mind.

My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.

The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had roughened the husk.

These are the kinds of things a guy thinks about when he visits his own grave.

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

Hard knocks have a place and value, but hard thinking goes farther in less time.

A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.

Love of action is not industry.

In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.

Three silences there are: the first of speech, the second of desire, the third of thought.

Philosophy is talk on a cereal box.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?