The collection / 379 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

379 results · Page 3 of 16Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

02Undated

What has been is no more. Change has come.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

03Undated

It's so damn hard to bloom... to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it's hard. Desire to change isn't enough. Or desperation. Couldn't be done without...love,

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

04Undated

Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be.People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you get bored. Beat everything with a stick-boring.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

05Undated

...any talent - whether to write songs or to write novels...came with the obligation to use it to the fullest of one's ability, with a fierce commitment barely distinguishable from neurotic obsession. ... In fact...commitment to the point of obsession wasn't merely an obligation but a necessity...

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

06Undated

Art is the only answer to chaos and the void.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

07Undated

...what makes humanity beautiful is our free will, our individuality, our endless striving in spite of our imperfection.BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOONChapter 27 Page 214

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

08Undated

...he was part of a family whether he wanted to be or not, the family of humanity, more often than not a frustrating and contentious clan, flawed and often deeply confused, but also periodically noble and admirable, with a common destiny that every member shared.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

09Undated

A high degree of intelligence yes in no other creature in the natural world. That's why nature shuns us and why we subconsciously hate her and seek to obliterate her. High intelligence leads to the concept of progress. Progress leads to nuclear weapons, bio-engineering chaos and ultimately to annihilation.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

10Undated

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

11Undated

He would pray...for everyone who knew pain, which meant everyone who wore a human face.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

12Undated

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

13Undated

I'd always had an ear for beauty, and maybe I'd had an eye for it as well, but until that day, I'd not recognized that the truth in great music could be found also in great art, that the heart could be lifted and the mind sharpened equally by both.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

14Undated

Do not doubt the beauty of your heart.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

15Undated

Whatever happens here, trust your heart. It's as true as any compass.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

16Undated

In even a clear heart, some righteous acts of the harder kind can stir up a sediment of guilt, but that is not a bad thing. If allowed to be, the heart is self-policing, and a reasonable measure of guilt guards against corruption.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

17Undated

His resiliency was not the resiliency of the dumb but of a lamb who can remember hurt but cannot sustain the anger or the bitterness that brittles the heart.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

18Undated

Sometimes it seems that to exit this world, they must go through my heart, leaving me scarred and sore.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

19Undated

She never had much in this life, but with the simplest things, she made her corner of the world as beautiful as any king's palace. We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

20Undated

This isn't a reasoned response to a configuration of stars, but the heart cannot flourish on logic alone. Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you don't overdose

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

21Undated

Evil itself may be relentless. I will grant you that, but love is relentless too. Friendship is a relentless force. Family is a relentless force. Faith is relentless force. The human spirit is relentless, and the human heart outlasts - and can defeat - even the most relentless force of all, which is time.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

22Undated

Everyone thinks his family is strange," Del said, scratching Scootie behind the ears, "but it's just that... because we're closer to the people we love, we tend to see them through a magnifying glass, through a thicker lens of emotion, and we exaggerate their eccentricities.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

23Undated

Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much that lies before us. We want a simple world, but we live in a magnificently complex one, and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world through filters that make it less daunting.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗

24Undated

Strange how the deepest part of us isn't able to speak more clearly to the part of us that lives only here in the shallows of the world.

Dean Koontz / quote

↗