Selected daily life quotes

1. It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

2. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

3. It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

4. I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.

5. We must have courage, faith, and lunch together sometime soon.

6. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

7. My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.

8. There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.

9. Trifles make the sum of life.

10. How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

11. Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.

12. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

13. Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

14. I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

15. My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

16. Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

17. I'm so grateful this day has ended well.

18. Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

19. Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.

20. Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

21. The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.

22. Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

23. Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?

24. Monogamy is so weird. Like when you know their name and stuff.

25. Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.

26. Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

27. Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

28. The Germans will make a few scattered attacks, then go away. The Romans will enjoy a fine September.

29. I arise today Through the strength of heaven: Light of sun Brilliance of moon Splendor of fire Speed of lightning Swiftness of wind Depth of sea Stability of earth Firmness of rock.

30. The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.

31. If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.

32. A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

33. Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.

34. 'The road to the sacred leads through the secular.'

35. Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

36. Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces; marriage is also three meals a day, sharing the workload and remembering to carry out the trash.

37. For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.

38. As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

39. Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.

40. It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

41. It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified.

42. It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

43. All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.

44. I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, 'God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children.' That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, 'I am clean. I am sleepy.' And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

45. It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty.

46. They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.

47. Each day is a drive thru history.

48. Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.

49. I just lost a buttonhole. [while looking at stage floor]

50. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I.

51. It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified.

52. I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

53. 'Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.' (p.263)

54. But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.

55. Whenever I go to shave, I assume there's someone else on the planet shaving, so I say, 'I'm gonna go shave, too.'

56. Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

57. There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.

58. The beloved does not drink a single drop of water without seeing His Face in the cup. Allah is He Who flows between the pericardium and the heart, just as the tears flow from the eyelids.

59. To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids - all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

60. Be kind to each other in your homes. Be kind to those who surround you. I prefer that you make mistakes in kindness rather than that you work miracles in unkindness. Often just for one word, one look, one quick action, and darkness fills the heart of the one we love.

61. It's not easy being a man! Oh no..I had to get dressed today... and there are other pressures.

62. Dorion, ridiculing the description of a tempest in the 'Nautilus' of Timotheus, said that he had seen a more formidable storm in a boiling saucepan.

63. According to an opinion poll, 13 per cent of women in the United States cannot say whether they wear their tights under their knickers or over them. That's something like 12 million women walking around in a state of chronic foundation garment uncertainty. Perhaps because I so seldom wear ladies' clothing I don't fully appreciate the challenge involved, but I am almost certain that if I did wear tights with knickers I would know which was on top. More to the point, if a stranger with a clipboard came up to me in the street and asked me how my underwear was configured, I don't believe I would tell him that I didn't know.

64. We rub the darkness from our eyes, And face our thousand devious secret mornings . . . And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending, Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer Compassionate over our towers bending.

65. I believe we should remember the Week-day, to keep it holy.

66. I'm just an old slag who gets up every morning, scratches his head and wonders what he wants to fuck.

67. [Orwell] could not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

68. Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed, Nary a curse cursed he, But moved in his House. With his dark little wife, And his dark little children three.

69. La vie habituelle fait l'ame, et l'ame fait la physionomie.

70. I wish they'd stop improving car washes. They just keep adding to the choice on that menu. The super valet, super foam valet, super wax valet. When all you want is a button that says: Get this shit off my bonnet.

71. 'Where are my keys?' (The Mask)

72. (after playing 'Chant Down Babylon' by Hugh Griffith) - Well at our house, before we go to bed every night, we always chant down Babylon for five or ten minutes, and yet it's still there in the morning.

73. Well, I was missing my earplugs. And the way that I found out why they're missing is because the little Elmo -- his five pounds -- came in to the bedroom and deposited something on -- he came in from outside, he put something on the rug and was going to eat it. And I walked over and it was an earplug that had already been in and back out -- and apparently so delicious ... he wanted it again!

74. I get all the news I need from the weather report.

75. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; - show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; - and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

76. I cook a lot, almost every night.

77. Thinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone.

78. For ett forfattarskap av lyrisk skonhet och etiskt djup, som lyfter fram vardagens mirakler och det levande forflutna.

79. Thomas: Sometimes it's a good day to die, and sometimes it's a good day to have breakfast.

80. I got up one morning, couldn't find my socks, so I called Information. She said, 'Hello, Information.' I said, 'I can't find my socks.' She said, 'They're behind the couch.' And they were!

81. A candle is enough to light the world. It makes it clear. Even at noon It glistens in essential dark. At night, it lights the fruit and wine, The book and bread, things as they are...

82. (Trying to talk over party noise). Actually we've got a nice little Saturday planned. We're going to Home Depot to pick out some wallpaper, then maybe we'll hit Bed Bath and Beyond... I don't know! I don't know if we'll have enough time!

83. The only thing I can talk about is the cold because it is the only thing going on today.

84. I had a dread in my hand at the dinner table and it was...really awkward!

85. Torrie Wilson (in the shower): 'Have you seen my towel?

86. What the hell kind of bed you giving us, anyways. We don't want no pants rabbits. Ch. 2, p.20

87. ...he felt frustrated, his sense of fate and direction subverted by banalities - the frustration of the man who, having thought himself following his destiny, finds he is actually on the A318 to New Malden.

88. Here, for the first time, I felt an unshakable conviction that no momentary military advantage - even if such could have been calculated to exist - could have justified this stupendous, careless destruction of civilian life and of material values, built up laboriously by human hands over the course of centuries for purposes having nothing to do with war. Least of all could it have been justified by the screaming non sequitur: 'They did it to us.' And it suddenly appeared to me that in these ruins there was an unanswerable symbolism which we in the West could not afford to ignore. If the Western world was really going to make a pretense of a higher moral departure point - of greater sympathy and understanding for the human being as God made him, as expressed not only in himself but in the things he had wrought and cared about - then it had to learn to fight its wars morally as well as militarily, or not fight them at all; for moral principles were a part of its strength. Shorn of this strength, it was no longer itself; its victories were not real victories; and the best it would accomplish in the long run would be to pull down the temple over its own head. The military would stamp this as naive; they would say that war is war, that when you're in it you fight with every means you have, or go down in defeat. But if that is the case, then there rests upon Western civilization, bitter as this may be, the obligation to be militarily stronger than its adversaries by a margin sufficient to enable it to dispense with those means which can stave off defeat only at the cost of undermining victory.

89. I think if you left grownups to do what the really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone

90. She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for - well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat - I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell - everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.

91. God bless you, my dear!

92. All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness ... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

93. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

94. Ten Rules For Daily Life

95. A 'food cycle' is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed-potato casserole...

96. Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

97. There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

98. It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

99. Pears can just fuck off too. 'Cause they're gorgeous little beasts, but they're ripe for half an hour, and you're never there. They're like a rock or they're mush. In the supermarket, people banging in nails. 'I'll just put these shelves up, mate, then you can have the pear.' : So you think, 'I'll take them home and they'll ripen up.' But you put them in the bowl at home, and they sit there, going, 'No! No! Don't ripen yet, don't ripen yet. Wait til he goes out the room! Ripen! Now now now!'

100. Praise with elation, Praise every morning, God's re-creation Of the new day!