Jocelyn > Jocelyn's Quotes

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
― Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book

“Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.”
― Dr. Seuss

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Until you die .. it's all life.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle

“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“love is a hawk with velvet claws
love is a rock with heart and veins
love is a lion with satin jaws
love is a storm with silken reins”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut