Quotes About Transformation

The forest of Tantrevalles shades a deep dank soil; somewhere under this mold lies the carcass of a snake which in better times used the name Visbhume; he no longer tippety-taps and moves and jerks to the rhythms of a propulsive inner music; and sometimes one wonders in cases like this: here is the dead thing; where has the music gone?

have been prisoner, slave, fugitive, and now king, which I prefer.

The old Galactic Prime sat silent, mouth compressed, eyes burning like far volcanoes. At his feet the new Prime, Lord of Two Billion Suns, found a dead leaf, put it into his mouth, and began to chew.   Afterword

The Europeans, who had been cut off from the mainstream of civilization since the fall of Rome, eagerly drank in the new knowledge, put on the new clothes, listened to the new music, ate the new foods, and enjoyed a rapidly escalating standard of living in almost every regard.

Under the widespread influences from the paper and printing, gunpowder and firearms, and the spread of the navigational compass and other maritime equipment, Europeans experienced a Renaissance, literally a rebirth, but it was not the ancient world of Greece and Rome being reborn: It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture

Every ending is just an opportunity to start again, wiser, more experienced, and more emboldened for the next act.

when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when.

New needs need new techniques.

I took everybody, including the dog, for a ride, and we went around the block four or five times, congratulating one another upon our new mobility. I discovered that my former casual attitude of timid acquiescence was not consistent with someone who could drive a car, so I fell gradually into a new personality, swashbuckling and brazen, with a cigarette usually hanging out of one corner of my mouth because I had to keep both hands on the wheel.

When the Almighty grants anyone special talents and abilities, he or she is to use them for the service of G d. Each one must use his or her talents and aptitudes to help achieve the ultimate purpose and transform this world into a sanctuary, a fitting abode for G dliness.

That is, when one realizes the fact of a descent or degradation and corrects its causes, this itself causes an ascent to a level even higher and greater than the original one.

Love child! What else? You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose.

It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity.

I never forgot, never, that it had been he who, with two words, turned my deadliest flaw to a treasure beyond price.

It is a dangerous thing to bring a dream to life....I have watched my deepest, dearest hopes take shape, and I am not entirely sure I like the shape they have taken.

Without change, there can be no growth; and without growth, we stagnate and die.

Se solo potessi fare del mio cuore e della mia anima qualcosa di diverso da un campo di battaglia!

It is a funny thing, how one's perspective changes.

mayhap if I played at being the kind and gentle husband long enough, it would become true. Master Piero once told us that we might embody those qualities we desire to possess by embracing them, over and over, until the line between seeming and being is no more.

I am reduced to calling a memory the sense of existing in the same place, with the same people and doing the same things (...) For a very long time, the days went by, each one just like the day before then I began to think, and everything changed. Before, nothing happened other than this repetition of identical gestures, and the time seemed to stand still, even if I was vaguely aware that I was growing and that time was passing. My memory begins with my anger.

If her soul were a room, it was as if a light were now shinning in a corner that had been dark.

places leave their mark in the same way that a human being can touch us. We have to make our peace with place, with the locations where we have spent time. We consider how we've been affected by being present in a certain spot - and how the place itself is changed by what has come to pass. You only have to visit a battlefield long after a war has ended, to know that places are never quite the same following a tragedy.

My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right; we try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path." He paused. "But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb.

My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right; we try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path. He paused. But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb.