To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing--I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.
Yann Martel
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
doubt philosophy life choose
I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always.. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
philosophy life mind light true fear shine darkness clever words fight word law mercy defeat hard forget open decency express
Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.
life music art sense story noise analogy painting books
If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
politics dreams citizenship imagination art reality sacrifice support artists end believing
Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error.
beauty music art human perfect rock punk error jack
When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.
pain grace time human experience dog special made god atheism
Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.
people unique precious made books
You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn't lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls of the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there's another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature.
community car literature idea money light image reason good running story book lost readers day communion eyes hands written reader save books
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.
life death beautiful fallen love
Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
death god
philosophy life people death family experience growing mother guidance sun share creatures lose losing father brother tree give
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
trust faith religion free god
So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.
controversy faith religion ideas story dialogue god life-of-pi
Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.
faith reason life-of-pi
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe? Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
belief life faith
Showing 1 to 15 of 100 results
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.