More quotes from Sunbeams

I made a list of culled quotes from a collection of Sun Magazine’s Sunbeams section a while back. I went through half the collection last time. This time I went through the other half. Here are the fruits of my labor:

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it. — Buddha

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. — George Orwell

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it. — C.P. Snow

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force. — Carl Jung

We have two lives — the one we learn with and the life we live after that. — Bernard Malamud

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can’t separate them. They’re wedded. — Henry Miller

The skepticism of youth signals the beginning of a search for something actually worth trusting, both within one’s own psyche and in the world. That’s why teens, supposedly stuck in life’s lost years, are often so unequivical about what they love and what they hate, and so frustrated when they feel misunderstood. The adolescent spirit is not the spirit of the lost. it is the conviction that you are not lost — that wandering has a purpose, and that what you deserve more than anything is the freedom to walk awhile on your own path. — Ann Powers

Children are messengers to us from a world we once deeply knew. — Alice Miller

Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. — Robert Fulghum

I knew couples who had been married almost forever–tending each other’s illnesses, dealing with money troubles or the daughter’s suicide or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person. You’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself, and she’s become the right person, or the only person. I wish someone had told me that earlier; I’d have hung on then. — Anne Tyler