Wendy Mass · 304 pages
Rating: (17K votes)
“Do you ever think if people heard our conversations they'd lock us up?"
All the time.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you."
The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Maybe some things aren't meant to be known. maybe there just meant to be accepted.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Life is short, have dessert first.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“The people on the train with me don't know it, but in my head I'm dancing.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“A wise man once remarked that we can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“It's not an old book, or a treasure map. Nope. Staring up at me was a pile of rocks.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“I made sure to pay attention to everything I was doing. To be fully in the moment. Because that's all life is, really, a string of moments that you knot together and carry with you. Hopefully most of those moments are wonderful, but of course they won't all be. The trick is to recognize an important one when it happens. Even if you share the moment with someone else, it is still yours. Your string is different from anyone else's. It is something no one can ever take away from you. It will protect you and guide you, because it IS you. What you hold here, in your hand, in this box, this is my string.
"Until recently, I thought it was death that gave meaning to life--that having an endpoint is what spurred us on to embrace life while we had it. But I was wrong. It isn't death that gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question.
"What matters is holding tight to that string, and not letting anyone tell us our goals aren't big enough or our interests are silly. But the voices of others aren't the only ones we need to worry about. We tend to be our own worst critics. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: 'Most of the shadows in this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.' ... Wisdom is found in the least expected places. Always keep your eyes open. Don't block your own sunshine. Be filled with wonder.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Reach for the stars and even if you miss you will land among the stars”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“...I believe that once you find something you love, something that works, why keep looking for more? People always think there is something better around the corner. I decided a long time ago I'd stop wasting my time looking for something better and enjoy what I had.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“I blame my dad for my sweet tooth. His motto was 'Life is short; eat dessert first.' How can I argue with that?”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“So softly Lizzy has to lean over to hear me, I say, 'I can't face the world until I know why I'm here.'
You're kidding me.'
I shake my head vehemently. 'No. I need to figure out my purpose. Until I do, what's the use of getting up?”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“fMr. Oswald places the telescope on the desk in front of us. "This," he says proudly, "Is a Broadhurst. It was the most powerful telescope for backyard veiwing in its day."
Which was when?" Lizzy asks.
The nineteen thirties," he replies. "Isn't it a beauty? On a clear night, you could see the whole entire solar system with this one."
Unable to stop myself, I blurt out, "My very energetic mother just served us nine pizzas."
Lizzy gawks at me like I have two heads. "He's lost it; he's finally lost it. I knew this day would come."
Mr. Ozwald chuckles. "Jeremy has just given us a mnemonic device for remembering the order of the planets.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Some choices are forever....Just because people aren't in our lives anymore, doesn't mean they stop thinking about us and vice versa.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Everything we think we know is really only perceived by our senses,' he explains patiently. 'The sounds we hear are just waves in the air; colors are electromagnetic radiation; your sense of taste comes from molecules that match a specific area on your tongue. Hey, if our eyes could access the infrared part of the light spectrum, the sky would be green and trees would be red. Some animals see in completely different ways, so who knows what colors look like to them. Nothing is really how we perceive it.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“If an object - a star, for instance, like our own sun - is eight hundred light years away from the Earth, it would take light leaving that object eight hundred years until it reached our eyes. So when you look at that object, you are seeing it as it appeared eight hundred light years ago, not as it looks today. It might not even exist anymore. Every time you look up at the stars, you are looking into the past.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Wisdom is found in the least expected places.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“I'm sorry for the randomness of what I wrote, Mr. Oswald. There's been a lot to absorb.'
Without looking up, he says, 'Never apologize for writing your truth, Mr. Fink. There are no right or wrong answers.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Maybe some things aren't meant to be known. Maybe they're just meant to be accepted.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“The harder something is to acquire, the more satisfying it is when you finally find it.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Always keep your eyes open. Don't block your own sunshine. Be filled with wonder.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Sometimes people think they are looking for the meaning of life, when really they are looking for an understanding of why they are here. What their purpose is, the purpose of life in general. And that's a much easier question to answer than the meaning of life.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“The meaning of life is to give life a meaning.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“We are all connected at a deep, chemical level. We are all connected to the universe, and the universe is inside us.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Best friends always know when the other's lying.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
“Before an apple tree is planted, no one will know how many apples will one day sprout from it. It's all about potential, and potential is hidden from all of us until we embrace it, find our purpose, plant ourselves so we can grow.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
Wendy Mass
Born place: Livingston, The United States
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“She thanked me again and then said, ''Some people say 'God is in the details.' Others say it's the Devil.'' Margaret replied, 'Maybe it depends on who's reporting the details.”
― E.L. Konigsburg, quote from Silent to the Bone
“Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm, its inner clock. In normal people, ambient conditions, especially the sun, dictate their humors and determine when they are tuckered out for the day. They’re on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
“a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant.”
― Nikola Tesla, quote from My Inventions
“You ought to have had a man to make you wash floors and kick you in the belly when you didn’t hurry up for him,” said Henny with all the hate of a dozen years. “I’m as rotten as she is—I’ve had men too—I’ve gone trailing my draggletail in all sorts of low dives—I’ve taken money from a man to keep his children—I’m a cheat and a liar and a dupe and a weak idiot and there’s nothing too low for me, but I’m still ‘mountains high’ above you and your sickly fawning brother who never grew up—I’m better than you who go to church and than him who is too good to go to church, because I’ve done everything. I’ve been dirty and low and done things you’re both too stupid and too cowardly to do, but however low I am, I’m not so filthy crawling in the stench of the gutter, I haven’t got a heart of stone, I don’t sniff, sniff, sniff when I see a streetwalker with a ragged blouse, too good to know what she is: I hate her but I hate myself.”
― Christina Stead, quote from The Man Who Loved Children
“History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity.It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Decay of the Angel
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