Category: quotes

A collection of some famous and not-so-famous quotes, with my thoughts on what they mean to me personally, and why I like them.

The Pursuit Of Beauty

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It is the pursuit of beauty in things and people that is the journey – the real journey. I was happiest when I sought beauty in words and music and images. I was happiest in movies or in the middle of a symphony – whatever allowed the mind to ponder all that was possible and glorious. The world, I suppose, is the result of actions taken by people possessed of an image or an idea, and the world I care most about is constructed from those images that reminded someone of the beauty and the nobility of people. I’m back on the job of looking for this beauty, and nothing is safe from my eyes and my ears. I want to find and host the beauty of the world.

– Tennessee Williams

A very warm hello to the people of the world!

In case you were wondering, this blog is still very much alive! I know it’s been a while (7 months!) since I last posted anything, but I haven’t stopped thinking about this blog, and what it means to me. Life has been busy this year, and I’ve been running a little short on motivation to write anything.

But I recently came across the above quote by Tennessee Williams, given to James Grissom in an interview in 1982, that resonated quite a lot with me, especially with regards to this blog, and which shook me out of my lethargy enough to finally pen something down. 😅

One of my goals with this blog has been to share and reflect on the beauty that I see around me, wherever it may come from – people, pictures, places, or in any other form. 

I do feel that given all that is going on in the world, sometimes, we do need to be reminded of the beauty in things and people. To be inspired by them. To strive to be better than before. To try and make the world, or at least our little corner of it, a better place. I know sometimes things like these sound very naive and cheesy, but I don’t think there’s an alternative. We can either choose to be cynical and become apathetic to the way of the world, or we can try and treasure those little moments of beauty in our everyday life, so that we at least have hope for something better, no matter how naive it may be. And I think you’ll agree with Tennessee when he says, “[t]he world .. is the result of actions taken by people possessed of an image or an idea..” So, it’s very important that that image or idea is a positive one, rather than a negative one. 

So yes, I do think that “the pursuit of beauty in things and people that is the journey – the real journey.” I do want “to ponder all that was possible and glorious.” And even though I’ve lost a little bit of touch with that pursuit in 2024, I want to get “back on the job of looking for this beauty”, and “I want to find and host the beauty of the world.”

As a new year dawns, this almost sounds like a new year’s resolution! But I’m not one for such yearly resolutions, which usually don’t last very long. So I’ll just simply hope that in 2025, I can try and be better at this journey than I was last year. And I hope the same for you too!

May we all seek and find more beauty everywhere around us in 2025, and may that beauty inspire us to take actions, no matter how small, to make our world just that little bit better.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year! 🥳

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Credits | Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash | Edited with Canva

Find Your Words…

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As J.K. Rowling said:

Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.

– Albus Dumbledore in “Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows”

I absolutely love this quote! And I couldn’t agree more. Words are indeed magical, and we can all do with a little bit of their magic.

And sometimes, we are the only ones who can bring that magic in our own lives. Because, we know ourselves. Because, the stakes are highest for us. Because, if we don’t, nobody else will.

So, find the words that give you hope. That show you the way forward when you feel lost. Only you would know the exact words to use.

Find them, write them down, and then put them on the walls, on your screens, in your heart.

And remember them on the days when you need a glimmer of hope.

Everyone needs to be a writer.

Not for anyone else, but oneself.

Because there will be days when you need the right words to get back up.

And the only person whose words would work would be yourself.

– Ehsaas

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Credits: Quote by me. Photo created with Canva.

The Unknown Knowns

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There are known knowns. There are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

Donald Rumsfeld

I recently came across this quote by Donald Rumsfeld, the former American politician. Although this quote by itself is quite enlightening – highlighting the limits of our knowledge, keeping us in check, lest we become over-confident and forget that no matter how much we know, there’s always more to know – it is not what today’s post is about.

So, why did I mention this quote? Well, as you were reading it, you might have also noticed something like I did. The quote talks about “known knowns”, “known unknowns”, and “unknown unknowns”. But there’s another category – “unknown knowns” – that’s conspicuous by its absence here.

And what exactly are these “unknown knowns”? Well, by their very definition, we can not know them! But even though we can not know or observe them directly, we can feel them. These things fall in the category of intuition, of faith, of belief.

This will be subjective to everyone, and many people might not even be able to relate to this, but if I talk about myself, there are things I just somehow “know” – there’s strong faith, belief even about certain things, which can not be justified or proved, based on empirical evidence, observed by our five senses.

It is these things that I refer to as the “unknown knowns” – “unknown”, because we don’t exactly know about how these things work, how they affect other things, how they came to be, etc., and “known” because our faith in them is so strong, that we know that they are true, that they do happen, even though we may not know how they happen. 

It’s a complicated thing to try and explain in words. Let see if some examples might help. Of course, different people will have such faith in different things, but still, here are some examples: belief in a higher power, in luck or destiny, in the karmic law, in the power of love, in your dreams of achieving something, or even simply in a better future, etc. We might not have any concrete evidence to believe in these things, yet some of us do. We don’t know what that higher power is (I’m not necessarily talking about God here), but in our heart, we just know that it is there. That’s what makes these things the “unknown knowns”.

Reading that quote above, I was reminded that we live in a society that focuses so much on the knowns / unknowns in the traditional sense – where things can be proved and disproved using cold logic and facts – but we hardly put in enough effort to develop this other way of “sensing” things, which sometimes I feel is very important if we have to survive in this world.

Again, I may not have any way to prove this, but I know my life is better because of my faith in these “unknown knowns”.

What about you?

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Photo by Katie Drazdauskaite @ Unsplash

Value Of A Moment

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Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.

– Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka “Dr. Seuss”

Today’s post is going to be a short one, like this month of February itself. 😄

To be honest, it’s also because there really isn’t much to add to this beautiful quote by Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka “Dr. Seuss” – he just said it so simply and succinctly!

I was recently reminiscing about a few cherished memories, and when I read this quote after that, I realized how true this is.

The specific moments I was thinking about were nothing out of the ordinary as such when they actually took place. At the time, I never would’ve guessed that one day they’ll become as cherished as they have now.

In fact, many times, if not all of the times, it seems that the value of a moment is actually that it is a memory. It is over time that these moments become more and more valuable. Sometimes, the people involved are no longer with us. Sometimes, situations have changed dramatically, such that we are no longer in a position to recreate similar moments again, and we only have what we already had. Sometimes, it’s just that feeling, experienced for the first time, that we can not really experience again.

If these moments didn’t turn into memories, they would be lost amongst the millions of other small moments we live through, and don’t even remember. Which also highlights the importance of living each present moment consciously, and not just sleepwalking through our life.

The moments that we are living through now will become a memory one day. If you are living through a tough time, it’s difficult, but it will still pass. But, if you are living through a good phase of your life, really cherish it, for, we’ll really know the true value of this moment much later – when all we’ll have is a memory of it.

And with that, I’ll wrap up this post. Wishing everyone a life full of such moments and memories! 😊

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Photo Credit: guille pozzi on Unsplash

The Meaning & Purpose Of Life

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The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

Pablo Picasso

So, I came across this quote recently. And it made me stop and think a bit. So, obviously, I had to share it with you guys. 😄

[ Note that even though I’m attributing it to Pablo Picasso, there seems to be some doubt about the accuracy of that. People much smarter than me have tried to find the true source of the quote, but it’s still not exactly clear. So, for now, I’m just going to trust the good people at goodreads.com who ascribe it to Picasso, and run with it. ]

The first thing it made me realize was that I didn’t have a clear enough picture of the difference between “meaning of life” and “purpose of life”. I knew they were not the same, but I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. Kind of looking at something through a misty haze – you feel there’s something there, but don’t know what precisely.

Before I go into a long-winded exposition on the difference between these: What do you think? Do you know exactly what these two things mean to you? What are some of the things that give meaning and purpose to your life?

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Discovering Our Course

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One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

– Albert Camus

This quote is taken from Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth Of Sisyphus”. And I wouldn’t blame you if it sounds confusing to you. I had first come across this quote a while back. And while I don’t remember exactly how I felt about it at that time, I think, now, with slightly more life experience, I can relate to it better.

Sometimes it is difficult to know where to go next in life, which path to pick. There are just so many possibilities, so many directions that one’s life can take. It’s not the case for everyone, though – there are people who clearly know what they want from life, and how to get there.

But if you are like me, you probably have been a bit confused, at least at some point, about where your life was headed. I was at such a crossroad recently, and that’s when I realised one interpretation of this quote that was applicable to me.

Of course, different people may have different interpretations of it. And I haven’t read the source essay to know full well in which context Camus said this himself. Still, based on just this one line, my interpretation is simply this: when you don’t know what you want, you decide based on what you don’t want. And sometimes, that gives you enough clarity to know what you wanted in the first place.

But as I was writing this, I realized, it’s not even just about “wanting” or “not wanting” things – it can be extended to other things as well. For example: You discover what kind of a person you are, by finding out what things you just can’t do or support or stand for.

The things that you don’t want are basically paths diverging from the road that you are on currently.

By knowing what we don’t want, what we are not, where we don’t want to end up, etc., we get a step closer to understanding the truth behind it – what we want, who we are, where we are going.

Imagine it like this: you are travelling on the highway, with no specific destination in mind. At regular intervals, there are exits. One exit will take you to city A, another to city B, and so on. As you encounter these exits, one-by-one, by either taking or not taking one of them, you are deciding the final city where you’ll end up, which will ultimately determine what course you took in your journey.

So, I think the point here is when we encounter these “exits” or paths, we should be mindful, as that will determine where we end up in life. Sometimes, we are just so used to “driving”, that we don’t even realise when we make a left turn here or right turn there. We are on “auto-pilot” mode, just going through the motions. But life doesn’t always present a U-turn for you to go back and make a different choice the next time.

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Beyond Right & Wrong

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

– Rumi

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you might’ve noticed that I share quotes from time to time – quotes that I like, and that mean something to me. It’s been a while since I last shared one, so I thought that’s what I’ll write about for this post.

The above quote is a translated version of a verse taken from the 13th century Persian poet Rumi’s poem, A Great Wagon. I’m not going to try to explain what he might have meant by this quote, as there are plenty of interpretations of its meaning already, and who really knows what he had in mind when he thought of this line? All we can do is guess based on our understanding.

So, what I am going to do is tell you why I like this quote myself – what it means to me or reminds me of. It may very well not be what Rumi might’ve intended, but to be honest, I don’t think he really would’ve even imagined that people would be talking about this line of his hundreds of years in the future! 🙂

So, here’s why I like this quote:Read More »

What Our Tired Souls Need

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No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.

– Brooke Hampton

It’s true, isn’t it? Ask any person living in the so-called “adult” world, and they are more likely than not to tell you that they are tired, that they need a break. But no matter how much we rest or sleep each night, every night in the week, even catching some extra hours of sleep on the weekend, we don’t really feel as refreshed as we do after a short break or vacation from the monotony of our everyday lives.

Physical tiredness may be overcome by rest, but as Brooke Hampton said, it’s not our body that’s tired. It’s our soul.

We are tired of the constant challenges that we face in life – from little inconveniences to major setbacks, whether they be professional, financial, or personal. We are tired of the expectations that others have of us, that we have of ourselves, which are oftentimes unrealistic. We are tired of the constant deceptions and lies and betrayals that we feel we have been subjected to.

No amount of sleep can help us recover from these. What we need is a way to rejuvenate ourselves. A way to go back to the “beginning”. A way to reset and start over.

To do that, we need to Read More »

How Old Are you?

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You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

– Samuel Ullman

Most of us must have heard of the oft-repeated phrase: “Age is just a number!” What it’s meant to imply is that our “age” is not defined by the number of years that we’ve been alive. But this phrase also doesn’t specify what, then, is “age” defined by?

I think this quote by Samuel Ullman very cleverly tells us what our “age” really is – a measure of the impact of our experiences.

I like the juxtapositions presented by the author – faith vs doubt, self-confidence vs fear, hope vs despair, and the way he related these to one’s “age”.

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Choices Of Hope

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May your choices reflect your hopes; not your fears.

– Nelson Mandela

Isn’t it a nice feeling to find your thoughts echoed by the greats? 😀

There’s one major difference though: While I can hardly manage to put those thoughts into words at all, the greats say it so succinctly, and with words that just speak to you, that mere mortals like me can just listen to them in awe. If the words above are as soft as falling asleep, mine would be as harsh as the morning alarm!

Even though my words probably won’t do justice to this wonderful quote, I still did want to talk a bit more about it.

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