A Quote by Emily Dickinson

To possess is past the instant; we achieve the joy, immortality contented, were anomaly.

Emily Dickinson

Quote Topics

Achieve Anomaly Contented Immortality Instant Joy Past Possess Were

Quote Author

Emily Dickinson
American - Poet
December 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886

Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

Woody Allen

Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.

Edgar Lee Masters

I don't want to achieve immortality by being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.

William De Morgan

The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

Terry Pratchett

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

Terry Pratchett

There sure are a lot of these 'instant' products on the market. Instant coffee, instant tea, instant pudding, instant cereal... instant dislike.

Charles M. Schulz

Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody's assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must therefore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while.

Hannah Arendt

There is often seen this anomaly in women, especially in those of childish natures,--that they possess at once great promptness and unskilfulness in falsehood.

Alphonse Daudet

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

Woody Allen

What a strange joy it was to talk, to fish gleefully into the past and fling its fragments about us, with the unfailing aroma of pleasantness that pasts always seem to possess!

Anne Bosworth Greene

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

Susan Sontag

The joy in catching butterflies is the joy of capturing - for an instant - utter beauty. The satisfaction of being able to let it go is immense.

Ruth Rudner

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden and they abandon their values.

Nhat Hanh

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, 'why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,' and they abandon their values.

Thich Nhat Hanh

What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.