Books that change lives

News alerts and talk on novels that are an adventure in self-discovery:
A philosophical fiction blog from Smink Works Books

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

QUOTE: James Redfield

"Once you learn what life is about, there is no way to erase the knowledge. If you try to do something else with your life you will always sense that you are missing something."

From the book The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

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Wednesday, October 17, 2007

QUOTE: Robert M. Pirsig

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands."

From the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

QUOTE: Georgiann Baldino

"We all have a disability of some kind; all are lacking in one way or another. Saul has an injury to his leg. What if his personality was deformed? How much worse if his soul was lame? Preachers or teachers look for the good in all of us. (Bless them for doing so.) I don't see a cripple. I haven't met anyone yet who isn't handicapped in some way. So what's the big deal? Don't hide your deformity. Wear it like a Purple Heart."

From the book The Nursing Home Fugitive by Georgiann Baldino

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Thursday, May 10, 2007

QUOTE: Tom Robbins

"The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."

From the book Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

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Sunday, January 14, 2007

QUOTE: Robin Sharma

"First of all, begin to live out of the glory of your imagination, not your memory."

From the book The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma

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Monday, October 30, 2006

QUOTE: Jean-Paul Sartre

"I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing."

From the book Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

QUOTE: Jean-Paul Sartre

People who live in society have learned to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. Is that why my flesh is naked? You might say - yes, you might say, nature without humanity.

From the book Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

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Friday, July 28, 2006

QUOTE: Lewis Carroll

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle."

From the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

QUOTE: Kahlil Gibran

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

From the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

QUOTE: Milan Kundera

"To laugh is to live profoundly"

From the novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

QUOTE: Richard Bach

You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

From the book Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach

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Monday, March 20, 2006

QUOTE: Lewis Carroll

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

From the book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

QUOTE: Henry David Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived."

From the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau

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Sunday, December 18, 2005

QUOTE: Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

from the book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Friday, December 09, 2005

QUOTE: Hermann Hesse

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."

From the book Demian by Hermann Hesse

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