137 quotes found
"When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes."
"There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall."
"Nothing ages a woman like living in the country."
"Life as a child and then as a girl had taught her patience, hope, silence; and given her a prisoner's proficiency in handling these virtues as weapons."
"Let’s go out and buy playing-cards, good wine, bridge-scorers, knitting needles—all the paraphernalia to fill a gaping void, all that’s required to disguise that monster, an old woman."
"It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place."
"Le monde des èmotions qu’on nomme, á la lègére, physiques."
"I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer."
"If one wished to be perfectly sincere, one would have to admit there are two kinds of love—well-fed and ill-fed. The rest is pure fiction."
"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."
"Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid?"
"We only do well the things we like doing."
"By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet."
"You do not notice changes in what is always before you."
"But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious."
"The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time."
"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."
"The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before."
"Total absence of humor renders life impossible."
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."
"The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen."
"Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness."
"You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly."
"There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion."
"What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!"
"It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change."
"As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow."
"It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time."
"For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance."
"It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship."
"Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken."
"Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: “It’s four o’clock … At five I have my abyss.”"
"Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave."
"Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette."
"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."
"On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath."
"Don’t ever wear artistic jewellry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation."
"Boredom helps one to make decisions."
"A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men... nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings."
"Toby-Dog: It seems to me that of the two of us it's you they make the most of, and yet you do all the grumbling. Kiki-The-Demure: A dog's logic, that! The more one gives the more I demand. Toby-Dog: That's wrong. It's indiscreet. Kiki-The-Demure: Not at all. I have a right to everything. Toby-Dog: To everything? And I? Kiki-The-Demure: I don't imagine you lack anything, do you? Toby-Dog: Ah, I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come... Kiki-The-Demure: And then what dreadful thing happens? Toby-Dog: You know very well! Inevitably, at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it — Castor Oil!"
"Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic. Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath."
"If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles,"
"(What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m not yet the writer I aspire to be, but at my age, great books written by women over 60 give me hope. Diana Athill, Colette, Harriett Doerr, Marguerite Duras, Grace Paley, Elena Poniatowska, Jean Rhys, Mercé Rodoreda, to name but a few."
"I am devoted to those who endured, like Colette. It is easier … to kiss the world a bitter goodbye than to go on working, writing, changing, enduring the slings & arrows of outrageous aging. Colette endured. And she wrote & wrote & wrote. Whenever I feel really depressed, I think of her & keep going."
"Here lived, here died Colette, whose work is a window wide open on life."
"I've felt that her perceptions, her feelings about food, gardens, the sea are beautiful. She was a peasant-that was her saving grace. And yet so elegant in her style. But I love the peasant in her, the one who delights in smells and tastes. I never tasted a of chocolate like her chocolate. And her matchless subtlety. Do remember the episode, I think it's so funny, when they were going to bring her into the Académie Française and they said, oh yes, she's a beautiful writer, a wonderful stylist, but she doesn't write about important things, only about love? She's only writing about love. She meant a lot to me."
"I do admire Colette, her wonderful descriptions of flowers, trees and animals, animals especially."
"One of the most frequently quoted literary passages on lesbian relationship is that in which Colette's Renée, in The Vagabond, describes "the melancholy and touching image of two weak creatures who have perhaps found shelter in each other's arms, there to sleep and weep, safe from man who is often cruel, and there to taste better than any pleasure, the bitter happiness of feeling themselves akin, frail and forgotten [emphasis added]." Colette is often considered a lesbian writer. Her popular reputation has, I think, much to do with the fact that she writes about lesbian existence as if for a male audience; her earliest "lesbian" novels, the Claudine series, were written under compulsion for her husband and published under both their names. At all events, except for her writings on her mother, Colette is a less reliable source on the lesbian continuum than, I would think, Charlotte Brontë, who understood that while women may, indeed must, be one another's allies, mentors, and comforters in the female struggle for survival, there is quite extraneous delight in each other's company and attraction to each others' minds and character, which attend a recognition of each others' strengths."
"For brevity, for wit that began back in the observation of the eye which produced it; for the loving openness, almost transparency, of all the senses to the moment passing, its time and place; for a recognition of the essence of that tension (of whatever name or quality) existing between and among the human beings and sometimes the cat in a room together; for a recording of feeling as strict as a seismograph's; perhaps best of all for a real gaiety, a real laughing gaiety-for these things we will value, honor, study, and above all delight in Colette."
"La pendule fait tic-tac-tic-tic Les oiseaux du lac pic-pac-pic-pic Glou-glou-glou font tous les dindons Et la jolie cloche ding-dang-dong"
"La mer Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs A des reflets d`argent La mer Des reflets changeants Sous la pluie"
"La mer Au ciel d`été confond Ses blancs moutons Avec les anges si purs La mer Bergère d`azur Infinie"
"Un beau jour, ou peut-etre une nuit, Près d'un lac, je m'étais endormie, Quand soudain, semblant crever le ciel, Et venant de nulle part, Surgit un aigle noir."
"Et tant pis pour ceux qui s'etonnent Et que les autres me pardonnent Mais les enfants ce sont les memes A Paris ou a Gottingen."
"Mais il mourut à la nuit même Sans un adieu, sans un je t'aime Mon père, mon père le ciel de Nantes Rend mon coeur chagrin."
"Standing outside the house where she was born, in June 1930, I think some things in Paris never change...things like the smell of fresh-baked baguettes at daybreak, the Napoleonic arcades [-] the morning coffee that you drink standing up for double impact and the sound of a chanson that's not just popular, its intensely personal, to everyone who hears it, it's a song that evokes a place, an encounter, a moment in your life. It might be sung by Edith Piaf, or Jacques Brel, or Juliette Greco - but the one for me who delves deepest into the collective unconscious, is almost unknown outside France, and her song is the story of millions of private lives, of the spirit of Paris, of the narrative of our times, of my lifetime, she's known as Barbara, though that's not her real name, she called herself, the Black Eagle, and she always wore black."
"La mort est dans l'adieu d'un ami veritable."
"A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point."
"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative."
"I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous, and very unhappy."
"All these animals are put in cages, never see the sun or grass, and they leave this hell only to go to the slaughter-house. For me intensive breeding is a sign of human degeneration. If one can find that acceptable, then we humans have lost all moral value. ... [How long have you been a vegetarian?] Since 1962, when I went on French television to denounce conditions of animal slaughter. That is when I became aware of the horror of factory farming, live transports and the killings of farm animals. I have always been sensitive to animal distress but from then on I refused to be involved in such inhuman industrial deaths."
"Solo voy con mi pena Sola va mi condena Correr es mi destino Para burlar la ley Perdido en el corazón De la grande Babylon Me dicen el clandestino Por no llevar papel Pa' una ciudad del norte Yo me fui a trabajar Mi vida la dejé Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar Soy una raya en el mar Fantasma en la ciudad Mi vida va prohibida Dice la autoridad"
"Me llaman el desaparecido Que cuando llega ya se ha ido Volando vengo, volando voy Deprisa, deprisa a rumbo perdido Cuando me buscan nunca estoy Cuando me encuentran yo no soy El que está enfrente porque ya Me fui corriendo más allá Me dicen el desaparecido Fantasma que nunca está Me dicen el desagradecido Pero esa no es la verdad Yo llevo en el cuerpo un dolor Que no me deja respirar Llevo en el cuerpo una condena Que siempre me echa a caminar"
"Mentira la que manda Mentira comanda"
"Todo es mentira en este mundo Todo es mentira la verdad Todo es mentira yo me digo Todo es mentira ¿Por qué será?"
"Quand on dit "je t'aime", on veut dire "aime-moi"."
"Je n'étais pas une femme, mais une industrie de la chanson."
"Je crois que mon rêve a toujours été de devenir quelqu'un. De réussir dans la vie, dans le spectacle, je ne savais pas exactement quoi, mais c'était ou chanter ou jouer la comédie, ou faire du cinéma ou du théâtre... c'était le spectacle."
"J'ai traversé la vie sans la regarder. Je sais ce qu'est ma vie. Mon mari, c'est le public. Les chansons, ce sont mes enfants."
"La vie m'est insupportable, pardonnez-moi."
"I try not to think that I am acting, but that I am the person. And instead of giving the audience your fantasies completely, I think it is more interesting to give them a place where they can imagine things instead of knowing everything; but maybe that is very French."
"There is no such thing as a Hollywood career for a French actress today. You can come here and do films like Juliette Binoche, but you can't come here and have a career. It's because you don’t sign with studios anymore. I remember when I did Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I signed a contract with Fox. At the time, actresses would be proposed different scripts because they had to use you. Sure it had some inconvenience, but actors made films they might not ever make if they weren't under contract. Now, only individual producers choose and actors are left on their own."
"I think that women who have to deal with a big amount of people have to compartmentalize themselves. You have to have an attitude of strength in a way because you are supposed to direct and organize the life of people in that way, aloof. It doesn't mean much, it's just an attitude."
"When you're not working and you're just living, you forget and all of a sudden something happens to remind you that you're an actor. I'm not always the nicest person to meet, because I forget very easily that I'm an actress when I'm not working. I live very normally, I go out with my friends, we go to the movies, I queue, we go to restaurants. Then if something happens to remind me that I'm an actress then I become a little different and things become a little heavy. I like the advantages; I know it's not right but I like being famous when it's convenient for me and completely anonymous when it's not."
"I can be very critical on myself and on other people; when I work, I can be very demanding. But to direct... I admire directors so much, I find them incredible: they manage such a huge number of people of different characters, think of the money involved. And they have to make decisions all the time, they have to answer all the time. I think it's incredible. No, no, I wouldn't be able to do that. I imagine that you have to forget about what the project represents sometimes because otherwise you become a monster. It's incredible the amount of responsibility and power you have. I wouldn't want that."
"It's the social networks that prevent people from dreaming any more about stars. Their private life is displayed constantly on social networks; and some even post private pictures of themselves. I find it a pity. Being a star entails glamour and secrecy; it's hard to keep any degree of mystery nowadays."
"[On wearing clothes made by the Yves Saint Laurent brand] You are more aware of what you wear. You feel totally different. When you live in public, it gives you an attitude that helps you be confident with people you don’t know."
"There's a very big challenge in the United States when it comes to ageing, especially for actors and actresses. I'm not saying it's easy in Europe, but in Europe we accept more readily to make movies with women in leading roles who are 40, 45, 50 years old. That is still very rarely seen in the US."
"I think it's very tiring to be Catherine Deneuve each day"
"It was a film about character but also about actresses too, and she is the most important French actress for 50 years. When she accepted, it was very easy to build a cast around her."
"She's not an icon in life. She knows things, and she's very clever. I think she's very shy. She tries to protect herself a lot."
"Catherine Deneuve seems to have been made for cinema, and cinema for her. She IS French cinema. She seems to be getting more adventurous every year."
"I'd like to be an American Catherine Deneuve. She plays beautiful, sensitive, deep parts with a little bit of intelligence behind them."
"The great majority of readers and hearers are the same all over the world. I have no doubt that the people of your country are like those I have met in China and India, and these latter were just like Tibetans. If you speak to them of profound Truths they yawn, and, if they dare, they leave you, but if you tell them absurd fables they are all eyes and ears."
"The attainment of transcendent insight is the real object of the training advocated in the traditional Oral Teachings, which do not consist, as so many imagine, in teaching certain things to the pupil, in revealing to him certain secrets, but rather in showing him the means to learn them and discover them for himself."
"Probably he will vanish like a mirage, with his caparisoned little steed and his party of followers, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. He is a part of the enchantment in which I have lived these last fifteen days. This new episode is of the stuff that dreams are made of. In a few minutes, I shall wake up in a real bed, in some country not haunted by geni nor by "incarnated Lamas" wrapped in shimmering silk. A country where men wear ugly dark coats and the horses do not carry silver inlaid saddles on golden-yellow cloths."
"Orthodox Buddhism strictly forbids religious rites, and the learned lamas acknowledge that they cannot bestow spiritual enlightenment, which can only be acquired by personal intellectual effort. Yet the majority believe in the efficacy of certain ritualistic methods of the healing of the sick, securing material prosperity, the conquest of evil beings and the guidance of the spirits of the dead in the other world."
"Gradually hostile forces seemed to gather around me. I seemed to be obsessed by invisible beings who incited me to leave the country, insinuating that I should be able to advance no farther, either in my study of Lamaism or upon the actual soil of Tibet. By a sort of clairvoyance at the same time, I saw these unknown enemies triumphant and rejoicing, after my departure, at having driven me away."
"I, one day, asked him: What is the Supreme Deliverance? He answered: It is the absence of all views and all imagination, the cessation of that mental activity which creates illusions. Another day, he said: You should go to Tibet and be initiated by a master of the 'Short Path.' ...I foresee that you would be capable of grasping the secret teaching."
"Nine hundred feet below my cave rhododendrons blossomed. I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes... Solitude, solitude! ...Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?"
"Sadly, almost with terror, I often looked at the threadlike path which I saw, lower down, winding in the valleys and disappearing between the mountains. The day would come when it would lead me back to the sorrowful world that existed beyond the distant hill ranges, and so thinking, an indescribable suffering lay hold of me."
"I go to Korea. Panya-an; the "monastery of wisdom" concealed in the heart of the forest opens its door to me. When I went there to beg temporary admittance, heavy rains had washed the path away. I found the Panya-an monks busy repairing it. The novice sent by his abbot to introduce me stopped before one of the workers as muddy as his companions, bowed respectfully and said a few words to him. The digger, leaning on his spade, looked at me intently for a while, then nodded his consent and began to work again, without taking any more notice of me. He is the head of the hermitage, my guide told me. He is willing to give you a room."
"Silence was not compulsory as it is amongst the Trappist, but the monks seldom spoke. They did not feel the need of talking nor of spending their energy in outward manifestations. Their thoughts remained fixed on secret introspections and their eyes had the inward gaze of the Buddha's images."
"There are a larger number than one would suppose who, when raising a small lamp in the gesture of an offering before the Buddha's image, ask for no more than spiritual insight. Though they may make but little practical effort to reach it, the mystic ideal of salvation through enlightenment remains alive amongst Tibetans."
"Whatever may be the causes at work, telepathic transmissions, either conscious or unconscious, seem to occur rather frequently in Tibet. Regarding my own experience, I am certain that I did receive on several occasions telepathic messages from lamas under whom I had practiced mental or psychic training. It may even be that the number of these messages has been larger than I suspect. However, I have only retained a few cases in which the lama afterwards inquired if I had understood what he meant to tell at a given time."
"Even the monks attached to morality acknowledge that a virtuous life and the monastic discipline, though of great value and advisable for the many, are but a mere preparation to a higher path. As for the adepts of the second system, they all believe in the beneficial results of a faithful adherence to the moral laws and the rules laid down for members of the religious Order."
"Moreover, all are unanimous in declaring the first method the safer of the two. A pure life, the performance of good deeds, righteousness, compassion, detachment from worldly cares, selflessness and quietness of mind act – they say – as a cleansing process which gradually removes the impure dust that covers the mental eyes,"
"As for the method which mystics call the Short Path, the Direct Path, it is considered as most hazardous. It is – according to the masters who teach it – as if instead of following the road which goes round a mountain ascending gradually towards its summit, one attempted to reach it in straight line, climbing perpendicular rocks and crossing chasms on a rope. Only first rate equilibrists, exceptional athletes, completely free from giddiness, can hope to succeed in such a task. Even the fittest may fear sudden exhaustion or dizziness. And there inevitably follows a dreadful fall in which the too presumptuous alpinist breaks his bones."
"That same day a little before dusk the young man appeared in the valley with his caravan. He wore the very same dress and the foreign sun hat which I had seen in my dream, and in the morning vision."
"To discuss this legitimacy is not always easy. The Buddha insisted strongly on the necessity of examining the propositions put forward by Him, and of understanding them personally before accepting them as true. The ancient texts leave no doubt on this point: Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or of priests. After investigation. believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others. p. 9"
"It is evident that the great majority of those who call themselves Buddhists have not been able to rise to the mental level of the Teaching of the Buddha. Most of them have built up for their own use various kinds of Buddhism which are anything but Buddhist and, in their ignorance, they uphold, often with bitterness, their belief and their absurd practices as the expression of the purest orthodoxy. p. 9"
"The object of these teachings is not to amuse the simple-minded, those charitably called in the Tibetan Scriptures the "children", it is meant for the strong to make them stronger, for the intelligent to make them more intelligent, for the shrewd to develop their shrewdness and to lead them to the possession of transcendent insight (lhag thong) which constitutes the real enlightenment. p. 11"
"The Masters of the secret teachings say that the truth learned from another is of no value, and that the only truth which is living and effective, which is of value, is the truth which we ourselves discover. p. 13"
"Literally, lhag thong, means to see more, to see beyond, to see extremely, supremely. Thus, not only to see more than that which is seen by the mass of mankind who are crassly ignorant, but to see beyond the bounds limiting the vision of cultivated minds, to bring into being the third eye of Knowledge which the adepts of tantric sects place in the center of the forehead of their symbolic Gods. p. 14"
"The faith commended to their faithful by all religions, and considered by them as a virtue essential for him who hopes for eternal salvation, is nowise approved in the Secret Teachings. Based on the advice given by the Buddha to His disciples, the primary recommendation that the Masters give to neophytes is: Doubt! Doubt is an incitement to research, and research is the Way which leads to Knowledge. p. 15"
"For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings.... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written."
"1889 also marks the first of Alexandra’s so-called neurasthenic crises... Alexandra... attempted to emancipate herself from what she deemed unworthy passions and habits. She claimed to have seen the banality of most human pleasures... To her diary... she confided that she could not believe in romantic love, which would only lead to infidelity, betrayal, and a broken heart."
"She predicted, wrongly, that she would die young... Without warning, a demonic voice would whisper in her ear that she could put a quick end to her troubles. She knew she mustn’t let it triumph. I belong to a new breed, she would reply. We are few in number but we will accomplish our mission. I am doing what I must."
"Of her several shorter efforts, “Women in Tibet” (Asia 1934) was an unmitigated triumph... female readers from countries as far apart as America and China were writing to her craving more information. The piece analyzed the means by which Tibetan women mastered a harsh environment and gained sway over their men. The women had achieved a de facto equality despite law and scripture unfavorable to them, this by virtue of innate independence and physical stamina. Tibetan women were clever and brave and therefore valued by their husbands."
"The tenor of the article showed that David-Neel remained a firm feminist—no less than during the period when she had crusaded for the legal rights of housewives and unwed mothers, still more for their economic independence."
"Whether one looks at Alexandra David-Néel the adventurer and explorer, the anthropologist, the scholar or the writer, her life is a testimony of an exceptional and highly gifted individual who stopped at nothing to achieve her aims, and in the process left behind a legacy of books, both entertaining and scholarly, that many successive generations will be able to study and enjoy. Although she was not known to have been officially affiliated with any specific occult group in the West, any esoteric school that cares to investigate or research her books as regards the world of the occult could only benefit thereby."
"In 1891, when she was twenty-three, David-Néel had an unexpected, but most timely windfall. Her English friend, Elisabeth Morgan... left David-Néel a small inheritance... enough to allow David-Néel to travel for more than a year through Ceylon and India. On this first of her major trips to Asia, David-Néel was reunited with Annie Besant, who was now the President of the Theosophical Society, with its headquarters in Adyar, near Madras, in India. During her stay there she studied Sanskrit with them, and then moved on to the holy city of Benares on the Ganges. Here she studied yoga with the famous guru, Swami Bhaskarananda of Varanasi... It was also in India where she first heard Tibetan music, which fascinated her. She was however, compelled to return to Brussels when her money ran out."
"At the age of 16 she was already running away from home for jaunts across Europe, and she traveled to India at 21... It was not until middle age that she married... in 1910 he (her husband) offered her a “long voyage”—he meant something like a year—to “get it out of her system.” She was gone for fourteen years, traveling and living in India, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Japan, making forays into the forbidden kingdom of Tibet."
"It was when she moved to Sikkim that she met three people who were to influence her life profoundly... This was the beginning of the most important and fulfilling period of David-Néel’s life. She actually underwent a physical transformation, the “neurasthenic,” somewhat unhealthy woman suddenly growing well and looking years younger....Her state of health improved enormously above a certain altitude —but it also seems significant that David-Néel, who until then had been isolated from other Buddhists, was suddenly living in a place where she received support for her practice."
"When the Dalai Lama asked her how she could have become a Buddhist without a teacher, she said, When I adopted the principles of Buddhism, I knew not a single Buddhist, and was perhaps the only Buddhist in Paris. During their first conversation, the Gomchen of Lachen remarked, You have seen the ultimate and supreme light. It isn’t in a year or two of meditation that one arrives at the concepts you express."
"To the Tibetans, it seemed perfectly logical for Alexandra David-Néel to have traveled to Lhasa: she was returning to the site of a previous incarnation."
"Love is the one emotion actors allow themselves to believe. 1"
"In love, we have to dare everything if we really love. 1"
"I knew everything and received everything. But real happiness, is giving. 1"
"I do very well three things: my job, stupidities and children. 1"
"I like to be loved like I love myself. 1"
"I don't really have the fear of death. I think to life. 1"
"You believe in God, then you don't believe anymore and when you have a big problem, you pray anyway.1"
"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own. 1"
"You don’t have to wait till you feel the pain. You can start right now. It’s not too late to be grateful."
"We will not put an end to extreme poverty if we do not give priority to education especially, girls' education"
"I think the price is having people who don't really know where you're going, where you want to go where you're coming from, make decisions, and sometimes these decisions can be very bad for you. But it's the price that I have to pay to get my music out and to be here today. And it's normal because everybody will go through it."
"I think artistes are humans as well. Even though they possess special gifts. They're also humans that go through what you go through every day. They have aches and they fall ill. We hear them because they're famous. A lot of unknown people, regular people who all we don't know, we don't celebrate them, they are. I think this life is an illusion. This life we need light."
"We'll never forget this year. But I think every day of my life has always been a lock-down. I'm usually almost in isolation all the time. So this time it wasn't very hard for me. It was like I've lived this every day of my life. I actually enjoyed and got to see what actual silence means; where I didn't have boats on the water and we could see fishes jumping out. And the birds were out, the sky was blue. You didn't hear the sound of cars. It was surreal."
"Tomorrow is your opportunity to fail or be successful if you please"
"“When you just can’t see the future, when you just can’t see the light, you always got to put on a fight.”"
"“I know I can’t change the past, but as the river keeps flowing, I’ll keep on moving on.”"
"“Universal quality education is one of the best antidotes to poverty”"
"“Always stay humble and kind”"
"“We don’t have to go to 360 degrees, all we have to go is 180. We don’t have to climb the highest mountains, all you’re looking for is within you”"
"https://guardian.ng/opinion/asa-nigerias-singing-hawk/"
"Thankfully steering free of unwanted cuteness or sentimentality, which have no place in this score."