Quotes About Balance

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.

too many maniacs not enough michelangelos

I want to have a lasting experience of God', I told him. 'Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.

I want to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery.

You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two...But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look thorough your heart, instead

I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.

What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it's too late?

It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case if that I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something

But why must everything always have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years - working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.

For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that perhaps I was asking too much of love. Or, at least, perhaps I was asking too much of marriage. Perhaps I was loading a far heavier cargo of expectation onto the creaky old boat of matrimony than that strange vessel had ever been built to accommodate in the first place.

Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart...

sometimes you count the days, sometimes you weigh them. a

Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.

Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble.

The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: "My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely)." Sometimes

Everyone should leave the table feeling as if they've gotten a bad deal," my father once taught me joylessly. "This way, you may rest assured that nobody was taken for a ride, and that nobody can get too far ahead.

My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely).

She remembered a line from Montaigne, something she had read years ago, which had always stayed with her, and which now felt horribly pertinent: "These are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.

The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: "So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it's also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.

He didn't quit his day job to follow his dream; he just folded his dream into his everyday life.

There's no dishonor in having a job. What is dishonorable is scaring away your creativity by demanding that it pay for your entire existence.