“I see when men love women, they give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”
“It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.”
“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”
“A few times in my life, I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds, the silence drowns out the noise - and I can feel rather than think. And things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything - they fade. I’ve lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present. And I realize that everything is exactly as it’s meant to be.”
“Walking around pantsless in your own home makes you 480% more comfortable.”
“I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.”
“There are plagues everywhere. There is sickness and disease that is everywhere. Everyone tries to hide from these things - the darkness and the shadows. It is just a matter of time till it finds you. I know that. I cannot outrun it. I can’t hide from it. There is nowhere to go. It is my wish to embrace it, to be alone in the middle of the crowd. I know this is all an illusion, a dream. It must come to an end. Nothing too good lasts too long. I can see the hope in everyone’s faces. I know they’re all searching for something. They’re all chasing a great dream. Each of them wants to better themselves. They’re all looking for answers. What they don’t realize is that they have found it already. They have found it in one another. And, as always, the world outside is waiting for us. Waiting patiently to take us away.”
“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”
Russell Baker - Commencement Speech
Here’s another excerpt of a commencement speech that I really liked:
“All right, let’s plunge right ahead into the dull part. That’s the part where the commencement speaker tells the graduates to go forth into the world, then gives advice on what to do when they get out there. This is a ridiculous waste of time. The graduates never take the advice, as I have learned from long experience. The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess. “
“Listen once in a while. It’s amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven’t heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody - now gone - whom you loved. Or sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.”
- Russell Baker, at Connecticut College in 1995
“Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.”