“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
Carl SaganAstronomer, Scientist
“The universe will end in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years. It is so far ahead in time that if I were to take one atom for every year that passes there are not enough atoms in the universe to get anywhere near that number.
Brian CoxPhysicist
“It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
Tyler DurdenFight Club
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, if you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it.
Marcus AureliusRoman emperor & stoic
“Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.
David BowieRockstar
“This present moment was once the unimaginable future.
Stewart BrandWriter
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Kahlil GabranWriter & Poet
“We often suffer more in imagination than in reality. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating sorrow.
SenecaRoman Stoic philosopher
“It’s never over, she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever.
Jeff BuckleySinger & Songwriter
“Two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity and sometimes I’m not sure about the universe.
Albert EinsteinTheoretical physicist
“Not a leaf repeats itself, we only repeat the word.
Muriel SparkWriter & Poet
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais NinWriter
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realised it sooner.
Sidonie Gabrielle ColetteNovelist
“The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.
AnonThe Mystics
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mark TwainWriter
“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
Frank HerbertAuthor
“I searched for god and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only god.
RumiSufi mystic & poet
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; We borrow it from our children.
Wendell BerryNovelist
“Every time you get dressed remember: If you die, that's your ghost outfit forever.
Anon
“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.
Heinrich HeineWriter & Poet
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl SaganAstronomer, Scientist
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S EliotWriter
“We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Bill HicksComedian
“One of the deep secrets of life, is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.
Lewis CarrollWriter
“We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.
Fernando PessoaPoet
“God is man's greatest idea.
Camille PagliaAcademic, social critic
“A boat is safe in the harbour, but this is not the purpose of a boat.
Paul CoelhoNovelist
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that inspires you. Devour films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.
JIm JarmuschFilmmaker
“I look back and at the time I was just working with this bloke called John. Now, I look back and I was working with John Lennon! As a Beatles fan now, it’s astounding to me that together we wrote just short of 300 songs and never had a dry writing session.
Paul McCartneyBeatle
“We all come and go unknown, each so deep and superficial, between the forceps and the stone.
Joni MitchellSongwriter
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William ShakespearePlaywright & Poet
“The greatest fear an actor has is fear. How you’re gonna be judged. I don’t want to get caught trying, I don’t want to get caught being afraid, that my story...my pretending...my lie, is going to be disbelieved. You have to look at the cameraman, the producer lurking in the corner and say, ‘I don’t give a fuck about any of you’.
Marlon BrandoActor
“In the end you’ve only got to be good at one thing and get through the others.
Stewart LeeComedian & Writer
“I'm no good at life, but funny sometimes with the commentary.
Kurt VonnegutAuthor
“If the Sun were shrunk to the size of a white blood cell (about ten times smaller than the smallest object a human can see), the Earth would be the size of a small RNA virus particle. At that scale, the orbit of Neptune would be just about 2 inches in diameter. Our Milky Way Galaxy would then be… ready… the size of North America and our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda would be 91,000 miles away. It’s big out there!
Unknown
“Arguing with a conspiracist is like playing chess with a pigeon. It’ll just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and strut about like it’s won anyway.
Dom JolyWriter & Comedian
“Do we ever stop loving silently, those we once loved out loud.
Marina AbramovicConceptual artist
“Some years ago a scientist did some research on the brain and found it is so complex, we only ‘know’ what 10% of it is used for. So became the mantra of all the new age gurus ‘we only use 10% of our brain.’ A complete misunderstanding of the original sentence. Most of the time it’s using 90% plus.
UnknownOften misattributed to William James
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
William ShakespearePlaywright & Poet
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowPoet
“We think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul BowlesFrom 'The Sheltering Sky'
“There exists only the present instant, a now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday or any tomorrow, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
Meister EckhartPhilosopher and mystic
“It's the very last thing, isn't it, we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn't have happened. You needn't have happened. But you did happen.
Douglas HardingThe Headless Way
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison.
Albert EinsteinTheoretical Physicist
“For in and out, above & below, ‘Tis nothing but a magic shadow-show, play’d in a box whose candle is the sun, round which we phantom figures come and go.
Omar khayyam11th century poet
“Stegosaurus was around 150 million years ago and had been extinct for 80 million years before the appearance of Tyrannosarus Rex (67 million years ago). The time separating Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus is greater than the time separating Tyrannosaurus and you.
Dinosaurs & Time
“There's deeper picture of reality, in which time and space do not exist. Space and time, concepts so foundational to how we experience the world, are not fundamental properties of nature. Don't worry if you don't know what I'm talking about, because I don't understand what I'm talking about, and nobody else does either.
Brian CoxPhysicist
“As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things’.
Howard CarterPeering through a crevice, at the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William ShakespearePlayright & Poet
“Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night it was never weaker.
JohnnyDavid Thewlis in Mike Leigh’s film - Naked