Quotes by Dutch Authors - Page 3

Frankly, I believe that identity is what's inside us.
Theo Coster
Gina always believed there was magic in the world. "But it doesn't work in the way it does in fairy tales," she told me. "It doesn't save us. We have to save ourselves.
Charles de Lint
Faith is like radar that sees through the fog -- the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.
Corrie ten Boom
Listening in the spiritual life is much more than a psychological strategy to help others discover themselves. In the spiritual life the listener is not the ego, which would like to speak but is trained to restrain itself, but the Spirit of God within us. When we are baptised in the Spirit - that is, when we have received the Spirit of Jesus as the breath of God breathing within us - that Spirit creates in us a sacred space where the other can be received and listened to. The Spirit of Jesus prays in us and listens in us to all who come to us with their sufferings and pains. When we dare to fully trust in the power of God's Spirit listening in us, we will see true healing occur.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I lay there for three whole days, totally paralyzed. My friends helped me to the bathroom and anywhere else I needed to move; but I have very vague impressions of those days because it was a time of complete darkness for me. Somebody told me later that what I had was a form of hysteria: my body and my mid fled into paralysis. There was nothing wrong with me organically, but somewhere inside I suffered a complete breakdown.
Diet Eman
It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.
Baruch Spinoza
Happy girls are the prettiest
Audrey Hepburn
People with Complex PTSD suffer from more severe and frequent dissociation symptoms, as well as memory and attention problems, than those with simple PTSD. In addition to amnesia due to the activity of various parts of the self, people may experience difficulties with concentration, attention, other memory problems and general spaciness. These symptoms often accompany dissociation of the personality, but they are also common in people who do not have dissociative disorders. For example everyone can be spacey, absorbed in an activity, or miss an exit on the highway. When various parts of the personality are active, by definition, a person experiences some kind of abrupt change in attention and consciousness.
Suzette Boon
What does it mean to care? Let me start by saying that the word care has become a very ambivalent word. When someone says: 'I will take care of him!' it is more likely an announcement of an impending attack than of a tender compassion. And besides this ambivalence, the word is most often used in a negative way. 'Do you want coffee or tea?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to stay home or go to a movie?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to walk or go by car?' 'I don't care.' This expression of indifference toward choices in life has become commonplace. And often it seems that not to care has become more acceptable than to care, and a carefree life-style more attractive than a careful one.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Vincent van Gogh
I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
Audrey Hepburn
In my experience there are billions of dollars available for pieces of shit. As soon as the material distinguishes itself by something interesting, financing becomes a problem.
Rutger Hauer
I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.
Baruch Spinoza
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
Bessel A. van der Kolk
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Vincent van Gogh
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
Baruch Spinoza
I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.
Diet Eman
In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Erasmus
The Kremlin has made a habit of accusing others of crimes of which it has been accused of itself [228]
Marcel H. Van Herpen
And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!
Audrey Hepburn
One need not hope in order to undertake nor succeed in order to persevere.
William the Silent
Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.
Vincent van Gogh
It is not my ability but my response to God's ability that counts.
Corrie ten Boom
We do not teach and practice community of goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord, that all true believers in Christ are of one body (I Cor. 12:13), partakers of one bread (I Cor. 10:17), have one God and one Lord (Eph. 4). Seeing then that they are one, . . . it is Christian and reasonable that they also have divine love among them and that one member cares for another, for both the Scriptures and nature teach this. They show mercy and love, as much as is in them. They do not suffer a beggar among them. They have pity on the wants of the saints. They receive the wretched. They take strangers into their houses. They comfort the sad. They lend to the needy. They clothe the naked. They share their bread with the hungry. They do not turn their face from the poor nor do they regard their decrepit limbs and flesh (Isa. 58). This is the kind of brotherhood we teach.
Menno Simons
The real difference is that with fantasy—and by that I mean fantasy which can simultaneously tap into a cosmopolitan commonality at the same time as it springs from an individual and unique perspective. In this sort of fantasy, a mythic resonance lingers on—an harmonious vibration that builds in potency the longer one considers it, rather than fading away when the final page is read and the book is put away. Characters discovered in such writing are pulled from our own inner landscapes... and then set out upon the stories' various stages so that as we learn to understand them a little better, both the monsters and the angels, we come to understand ourselves a little better as well.
Charles de Lint
Heavy laden -- that's what I am. Laden with pride, often thinking myself better than others while we have to think the other one better than ourselves. Laden with my own egotism. Laden with all my sins. And when I went to bed last night and thought about everything and wanted to bring all those difficulties to God, I couldn't even find the words!
Diet Eman
Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.
Anne Frank
I started this dirty quote business when I noticed that I only tend to read authors when their quotes convince me of wit and style. In a world overflowing with bad literature and corrupted product-placement critics the only weapon one has is either word of mouth or quotes, and me I highly prefer the latter. So I have just decided that I will only post to facebook through goodreads quotes. That's policy that makes a lot of sense for a writer.
Martijn Benders
Regrets... Regrets are bootless. A vain trick of the mind. An impotent raging against what cannot be changed anyway. A distraction from the moment.
Andrew Ashling
Riuscirò anch'io a realizzare i miei sogni? C'è un piccolo burrone tra la realtà e i sogni, il problema è riuscire a oltrepassarlo senza caderci dentro, a volte diventa difficile e si viene risucchiati dal mondo.
Sara Dardikh
There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
Charles de Lint
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.
Baruch Spinoza
[T]he term 'nonhuman' grates on me, since it lumps millions of species together by an absence, as if they were missing something. Poor things, they are nonhuman! When students embrace this jargon in their writing, I cannot resist sarcastic corrections in the margin saying that for completeness's sake, they should add that the animals they are talking about are also nonpenguin, nonhyena, and a whole lot more.
Frans de Waal
those, who are believed to be most self—abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious
Baruch Spinoza
Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.
Vincent van Gogh
Finally, if you ask why this complete picture of the Antichrist is given us in Scripture, my answer is: in order that we might clearly recognize it when it is revealed. And what then must we do when we see it is come? Must we oppose it, must we fight it with the sword? That, of course, is completely impossible. It will come. It must come. And to oppose its coming is entirely vain. Its coming is irresistible. And the battle is not one of, the sword. But as the text has it, he that is for captivity, into captivity he goeth; and if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword he must be killed. No, we cannot oppose the power of Antichrist by main force. When that world-power comes and reigns supreme, we shall be submissive to the last, as far as God and our conscience permit. But here is the patience and the faith of the saints, that in all these times they remain faithful, and refuse to deny the Christ. They wait for the day of His coming. May God give us grace to be found faithful at all times, and watching and praying, so that no one may take our crown.
Herman Hoeksema
A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on and so forth until finally you can step across the threshold, almost one of the family.
Michel Faber
Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.
Baruch Spinoza
You can't afford to let the heartbreaks in life ruin your future.
Cheryl Koevoet
Memories are the key not to the past but to the future.
Corrie ten Boom
Is God present or is he absent? Maybe we can say now that in the center of our sadness for his absence we can find the first signs of his presence. And that in the middle of our longings we discover the footprints of the one who has created them. It is in the faithful waiting for the loved one that we know how much he has filled our lives already. Just as the love of a mother for her son can grow while she is waiting for his return, and just as lovers can rediscover each other during long periods of absence, so also our intimate relationship with God can become deeper and more mature while we wait patiently in expectation for his return.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Love is larger than the walls which shut it in.
Corrie ten Boom
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Baruch Spinoza
Something is wrong here: sex has been with us since the human race began its existence, yet I would estimate that 90 percent of human beings still suffer enormous inhibitions in this area.
Xaviera Hollander
Let the Gods create the days, and just live through them.
Andrew Ashling
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.
Vincent van Gogh
From the heart arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart, too, has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. Finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. Thus the heart is the central and unifying organ of our personal life. Our heart determines our personality, and is therefore not only the place where God dwells but also the place to which Satan directs his fiercest attacks. It is this heart that is the place of prayer. The prayer of the heart is a prayer that directs itself to God from the center of the person and thus affects the whole of our humanness.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.
Erasmus
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can bel How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is I
Anne Frank
Everybody has a soul." I turn to Pelly. "And that means you, too." "I'm not so sure of that," he says. "What does it feel like?" "Having a soul?" I look at Maxine, but she only shrugs. "I don't know," I tell Pelly. "I don't have anything to compare it to- you know, what not having a sould would feel like." We fall into a kind of awkward silence. I don't know about the others, but I'm working on what a soul is and not coming up with a whole lot. I mean, I just always thought of it as me- what I feel like being me. But surely Pelly feels like himself, so that means he's got a soul right? But if that's not your soul, then what is? It's weird and not something you really think about, is it?
Charles de Lint
The sound of natural things was wonderful to us. In the middle of all the suffering, it seemed pure, untouched.
Diet Eman
But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.
Anne Frank
People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: "A quiet conscience mades one strong!
Anne Frank
Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.
Erasmus
Since it has quietly began to snow,new distances have awakened within me.
Gerrit Achterberg
There's more to life than just surviving . . . but . . . sometimes just surviving is all you get
Charles de Lint
The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.Piet MondrianThe Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Greater Creativity by Julia Cameron
Piet Mondrian
I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do.”“They're human.”“Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group…
Andrew Ashling