Quotes About Change

And you'd better bet that changes along the lines of those presented in this chapter occurred in the brains of anyone transformed by these transformations. A different world makes for a different worldview, which means a different brain. And the more tangible and real the neurobiology underlying such change seems, the easier it is to imagine that it can happen again.

As you read in the last chapter, your head movements will be SLOW. If you are used to turn your head left and right very quickly right now, BANISH this low status behavior from your life.

If I knowed I was a fool I might learn to be better and do better

Before you came to live with us, our lives were as always, and we were happy. We worked, we ate, and then we slept. When you came we were glad, for you brought us many fine gifts. And every night, instead of going to sleep, we sat with you, drank coffee, and smoked your tobacco, and listened to your radio. But now you go, and we are sorry, for all of these things go with you. We now know pleasures to which we are unaccustomed, and we shall be unhappy.

the structure of a page of good prose is, analyzed logically, not something frozen but the vibrating of a bridge, which changes with every step one takes on it

He is capable of turning everything into anything--snow into skin, skin into blossoms, blossoms into sugar, sugar into powder, and powder back into little drifts of snow--for all that matters to him, apparently, is to make things into what they are not, which is doubtless proof that he cannot stand being anywhere for long, wherever he happens to be.

Les idéaux ont de curieuses qualités, entre autres celle de se transformer brusquement en absurdité quand on s'essaie de s'y conformer strictement.

Everything we feel and do is somehow oriented lifeward, and the least deviation away from this direction toward something beyond is difficult or alarming. This is true even of the simple act of walking: one lifts one's center of gravity, pushes it forward, and lets it drop again - and the slightest change, the merest hint of shrinking from this letting-oneself-drop-into-the-future, or even stopping to wonder at it - and one can no longer stand upright!

Ich war eigentlich in meine Liebe damals verliebt, in meinen veränderten Zustand, weniger in die Frau, die dazu gehörte.

e presto o tardi sorger un'epoca di ovvio cameratismo sessuale, in cui ragazzi e ragazze in concordia discorde staranno davanti a un cumulo di vecchie molle spezzate che prima costituivano l'uomo e la donna!

Progress would be wonderful — if only it would stop.

Der Zug der Zeit ist ein Zug, der seine Schienen vor sich her rollt. Der Fluß der Zeit ist ein Fluß, der seine Ufer mitführt.

If all the artists you loved changed you, they'd hack you up in little piece and you'd never get back together. That, or you'd end up loving only one artist forever.

the man you watched die yesterday doesn't exist today; he fell to yesterday's bullets and you've got today's bullets to deal with. Nevertheless, sometimes it got me to brooding.

They came and they went; they ached and pained. They laughed privately and cried to themselves as if heeding a way- off silent call. They were forever childish, sweet and convulsive. They heard sound the way dog heard sound. They were like the moon- they changed every eight days.

If you want him to do it, you've got to change the picture of the world inside his head.

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

The past is always a rebuke to the present.

He would get up and go out into a world which seemed very unfamiliar, but with a tantalizing unfamiliarity like the world of boyhood to which an old man returns.

Then after a long time Annie wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a big girl and I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In the dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger.

I went back to my own innocent little chores and sat in my office as the fall drew imperceptibly on and the earth leaned on its axis and shouldered the spot I occupied a little out of the direct, billowing, crystalline, consuming blaze of the enormous sun.

they always gave good reasons for the things they did, and then when they got old they lost their reasons for doing anything and sat on the bench in front of the harness shop and had words for the reasons other people had but had forgotten what the reasons were.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name, which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger…the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you anymore.