Criss Jami Quotes
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence.
From attraction and affectionCover of perfectionFailure beyond texture to a painful lessonEverything that was from the start wasn't from the heart
One may suffer the long-term in order to grow in appreciation for the small things. For in short-term suffering, one only notices the large.
Stretched and skewedTap of the 8-ball and the cueScratches fall throughThey are the scars of you
To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.
Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking.
When enemies, the intellect and the heart only see one another as the hater and the fool.
In their minds, it seems as though people don't often have the same answers, but in their hearts, they do very frequently have the same questions.
The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.
A fruitless year, take a fearless heartOne that blooms late will flourish in the dark
To esteem what makes you holy over what makes you happy - that is the greatest dare.
His mindIt says survival of the fittest butHis soulRevival of the idiotsSo good riddance, dancing
Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears.
Christ didn't join in. He saw which direction the rocks were being thrown, and became a shield.
Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public.
I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.
To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make!
If only we were all better educated. If then, higher education would at last be a journey for skill and knowledge rather than for power and status.
This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive.
Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow.
False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.
Fame is an island, and right before the castaway, the getaway of being known without being known.
If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.
If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion.
A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false.
Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth.
...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.
After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy.
I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.
Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas.
Rebuke without love is abuse. But, a love that would never rebuke? I dare to admit that that, too, would be a kind of abuse.
Children are the most reasonable about discipline. When they tell you not to do something, it's always because they know why.
God speaks of his children shining best in ways that only he can provide. The heavens lift one as a golden child while the flesh lowers one to a child with gold.
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.
One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn't care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum.
Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful.
The most important part of discernment is pinpointing the forces to be reckoned with, both the constructive and destructive.
What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.