People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.


Muriel Barbery

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start their life as children.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Very few of us have any idea whatsoever of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of c...
GRAHAM TAYLOR
I couldn't be a royal. It's like living in a supersonic goldfish bowl.
OZZY OSBOURNE
What makes life most difficult is the media intrusion, ... I think the public has gotten more and mo...
PENNY JUNOR
No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
KINGSLEY AMIS
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing ...
R.A. SALVATORE
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world,it will all be much simpler.
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, ...
ELLIOTT ERWITT
Some people like you, some people don't. In the end you just have to be yourself.
ANDRES INIESTA
I'm a city guy. I really like the fast-pace life, and there is no better place for that than L.A., u...
JUSTIN BLALOCK
I can't moan about any of it. I had a great time in the goldfish bowl.
ROBERT PLANT
If two people are meant for one another, that doesn't mean that they have to rush and be together ri...
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT
If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl ...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
I have as much privacy as a goldfish in a bowl.
PRINCESS MARGARET
I've got a new invention. It's a revolving bowl for tired goldfish.
LEFTY GOMEZ
I hate reality shows like Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity. I'd rather watch a goldfish bowl.
JANET STREET PORTER
I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the peop...
JODI PICOULT
I can't moan about any of it. I had a great time in the goldfish bowl.
ROBERT PLANT
I knew from last year that the rims are so tight, the only way you can make a shot is if it goes rig...
ANTOINE AGUDIO
We all live in a televised goldfish bowl.
KINGMAN BREWSTER, JR.
We all live in a televised goldfish bowl.
KINGMAN BREWSTER
The most important thing I can do for my children is to protect them and to teach them. After that, ...
THOMAS J. POWELL
It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and t...
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
Performers are the neediest people in the world. Unless you've been in that goldfish bowl - nobo...
OLIVIA HUSSEY
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A lasting marriage, they say, is one where the two reach for different sections of the Sunday paper....
BILLY COLLINS
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they m...
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they ...
ROBERT STEVENSON
I failed a lot of times running after people that didn't feel the same way for me. I treated them li...
MAHMOUD EL HALLAB
It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Nothing in my life is going right, right now and there's got to be a reason for that. I think that G...
MINDY MCCREADY
I've got a new invention. It's a revolving bowl for tired goldfish.
LEFTY GOMEZ
Pregnancy is barbaric. … The husband's guilty waning of sexual desire, the woman's tears in fr...
THE CHILDREN
I beheld the trappings of upper-middle-class comfort. The big-screen TV and VCR. The crush of name-b...
THE CHILDREN
I like work/life separation, not work/life balance. What I mean by that is, if I'm on, I want to...
TIMOTHY FERRISS
Most people go in bookshops and have no idea what they want to buy. Somehow, the books sit there, al...
CECELIA AHERN
If these is right from the beginnig up to the end like in books "Don't touch this book", this is rea...
DEYTH BANGER
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably ca...
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM
Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need....
WARREN ELLIS
I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky.” I finished the sixth, and was...
SARAH J. MAAS
this sounds a little simple, but I think if we didnt know illness we wouldnt really feel the exhilir...
PRISCILLA WARNER
I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be...
FANNIE FLAGG
If you look at the beginning of children's entertainment in literature, the first books that wer...
LEE UNKRICH
If you have ever opened a can of worms, boxed yourself into a corner, ended up in hot water, or foun...
MARYROSE WOOD
Sarcasm is weird. Even not in acting, in life I feel like 'sarcastic' is a word that people ...
AUBREY PLAZA
People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, ...
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY
And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the hu...
DALLAS WILLARD
The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach the...
BARUCH SPINOZA
Shoot for the moon - if you miss you'll end up in the stars.
ARTIE SHAW
Always the aim for me is making people feel like they are not alone. That's just the greatest fe...
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
If you start by doing it right, they'll be better in the end. But if I let them go, it ain't going t...
FRED GRAVES
I remember lying out in my bed and looking at the vast, quiet sky. Right up above my head, there wer...
SPIKE MILLIGAN
Even if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways, it is fathers and mothers...
AUGUSTUS Y. NAPIER
At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for m...
SARAH DESSEN
The only people you have to look out for in life are the people that don't care about anything or an...
SHANNON L. ALDER
I guess that we just tried to teach the boys good values from the very start.
MICHELLE JONES
You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER
Life is so much easier when I allow myself to be myself and go with the flow. Whatever that looks li...
TAYLOR SCHILLING
Life, I've learned, is never fair. If they teach anything in schools, that should be it.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
Aim for the stars and you'll make it to the moon. Aim for the moon and you'll never make it through ...
RAY BEDARD
Reach for the stars.
CHRISTA MCAULIFFE
We just signed a commitment for peaceful settlement, ... We aim to end violence and to begin a new l...
HAMID AWALUDDIN
I am a great believer in jobs for teens. They teach important life lessons, build character, and inf...
GILLIAN FLYNN
We all pine for a time in life when things were simpler. Even when they weren't necessarily simp...
BEN GIBBARD
I find that when people doubt or believe it won’t work or can’t be done, they really want me to ...
DR.'S RICK AND SUSANN CRAWFORD
Studies show that people who learn to save early in life usually make smarter financial decisions la...
DANA HURST
The scientific method gives us information by testing and repeating observable things so that we can...
LEWIS N. ROE
Time is a teacher which in the end it kills all it's students. (Synchronicity 2015 Film)
DEYTH BANGER
People are dying to tell you their secrets; it's just a matter of getting the conversation going...
CHARLES MCCARRY
It makes me happy to think that this world of art-as-investment is a minuscule fraction of the art w...
ADAM DAVIDSON
I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. The...
MIRA NAIR
It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate ...
W. EDWARDS DEMING
It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate ...
W. EDWARDS DEMING
Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who...
OSHO
These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach...
CHARLES MANSON
Watching a baseball game on television is like chasing the great white whale in a goldfish bowl. It ...
WARD JUST
Taking a single letter from the alphaber," he said, "should make life simpler."

"I don't ...
JAMES THURBER
If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending bl...
MALCOLM X
For people who say they hate being lied to, just start telling them nothing but the pure truth--abou...
SETH ADAM BROWN
People think that the people in Hollywood have some master plan. They just make the movies that peop...
ALAN ARKIN
If you end up biting your teeth, the upper jaw with the lower jaw, while having your meal from a whi...
APURVA GAGLANI
I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that soun...
EMMANUELLE BEART
I aim for the stars, and winning a world title will not be a fulfilment of a dream for me. It never ...
TYSON FURY
I was trying to aim for the pack. (Paris) just marched right through and got it.
COREY MARET
If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four year course, we could en...
CHARLES F. KETTERING
Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the...
JENNIFER NIVEN
We knew it was going to be a battle. They wanted to avenge their loss up there. I wasn't sure how th...
JACKIE PARSLEY
I think people should try to teach young children that these qualities - stubbornness and a capacity...
RENZO PIANO
I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I ...
ELIZABETH WURTZEL
The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in ...
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made...
J.M. SYNGE
Love is like a pane of glass.. It can take harsh beatings from the weather around it... But if it ge...
TYLER HOYT
For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
SISSY SPACEK
And of course, when you see your brother in the toilet bowl...there's a little voice that say, 'I wo...
BILL COSBY
I'm not cross about the idea of baptism; I just think the idea that when a child is born it is i...
HOZIER
The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a...
ARUNDHATI ROY

More Muriel Barbery

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small th...
MURIEL BARBERY
They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is be...
MURIEL BARBERY
We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we ju...
MURIEL BARBERY
And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beau...
MURIEL BARBERY
Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.
MURIEL BARBERY
I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.
MURIEL BARBERY
Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
MURIEL BARBERY
Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. At this very m...
MURIEL BARBERY
This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender tha...
MURIEL BARBERY
When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything ...
MURIEL BARBERY
The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.
MURIEL BARBERY
Sólo se me ocurre el psicoanálisis para rivalizar con el cristianismo en la predilección por los ...
MURIEL BARBERY
I am going to die, but that is of no importance.
MURIEL BARBERY
We have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within. It is this knowledge that enables us, at every...
MURIEL BARBERY
In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from...
MURIEL BARBERY
There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch ...
MURIEL BARBERY
... c'est peut-être ça la vie : beaucoup de désespoir mais aussi quelques moments de beauté où ...
MURIEL BARBERY
...what I dread more than anything else in this life is noise...silence helps you to go inward..anyo...
MURIEL BARBERY
It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselve...
MURIEL BARBERY
. . . maybe that's what life's all about: there's a lof of despair, but also the odd moments of beau...
MURIEL BARBERY
We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor...
MURIEL BARBERY
If you dread tomorrow it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know ...
MURIEL BARBERY
But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They ha...
MURIEL BARBERY
Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is suppo...
MURIEL BARBERY
Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.
MURIEL BARBERY
There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so muc...
MURIEL BARBERY
I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gain...
MURIEL BARBERY
The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to sim...
MURIEL BARBERY
I may be indigent in name, position, and in appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess...
MURIEL BARBERY
Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?
MURIEL BARBERY
When something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literar...
MURIEL BARBERY
Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fort...
MURIEL BARBERY
I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the founda...
MURIEL BARBERY
I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the od...
MURIEL BARBERY
If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
MURIEL BARBERY
For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word 'never'. And it's really awful. Y...
MURIEL BARBERY
Je savais qu'un afflux inespéré d'énergie l'avait levé de son lit, lui avait donné la force de ...
MURIEL BARBERY
For a few seconds Maria did not move, or even breathe, apparently. Then she gave a sorrowful gulp an...
MURIEL BARBERY
Iata deci cugetarea mea profunda pe ziua de azi: e pentru prima oara cand intalnesc pe cineva care c...
MURIEL BARBERY
Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nation...
MURIEL BARBERY
There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life," said Petrus, "when one drinks,...
MURIEL BARBERY
Qui croit
Pouvoir faire du miel
Sans partager le destin des abeilles?
MURIEL BARBERY
When we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both her...
MURIEL BARBERY
I used to think it a pity that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control.
MURIEL SPARK
If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death...
MURIEL SPARK
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive ...
MURIEL SPARK
I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian thir...
MURIEL SPARK
If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you m...
MURIEL SPARK
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is ...
MURIEL SPARK
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is ...
MURIEL SPARK
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.
MURIEL SPARK
A loser seldom lives in the present, but instead destroys the present by focusing on past memories o...
MURIEL JAMES
One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your p...
MURIEL SPARK
I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice....
MURIEL RUKEYSER
One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
MURIEL SPARK
It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.
MURIEL SPARK
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize yo...
MURIEL SPARK
Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.
MURIEL SPARK
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
MURIEL SPARK
It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.
MURIEL SPARK
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of imm...
MURIEL SPARK
I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice....
MURIEL RUKEYSER
The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of ...
MURIEL SPARK
Women and men have to fight together to change society - and both will benefit... Partnership, not d...
MURIEL FOX
Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and...
JAMES MURIEL
It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.
MURIEL SPARK
The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality
MURIEL RUKEYSER
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it...
MURIEL SPARK
Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of ...
MURIEL SPARK
Dreams the sources of action, the meeting and the end, / a resting-place among the flight of things.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
This was going full circle for him.
MURIEL COOPER
One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being ...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Our house was the most lit-up house on Frazier Street.
MURIEL COOPER
However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, i...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
The journey is my home
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Godfrey's wife, Charmian, sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical...
MURIEL SPARK
All my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine ...
MURIEL SPARK
Even if I didn't have a brokerage, I'd want to talk with a broker. You have big accounts, long-term ...
MURIEL SIEBERT
In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no pe...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
I am putting old heads on your young shoulders...all my pupils are the creme de la creme.
MURIEL SPARK
Flight is intolerable contradiction.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-wor...
MURIEL SPARK
...only one man lived who could understand MURIEL RUKEYSER It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on t...
MURIEL SPARK
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life
MURIEL SPARK
We're going to see what Bush says tonight, and we're going to see what Greenspan says tomorrow -- no...
MURIEL SIEBERT
All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine fo...
MURIEL SPARK
Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot un...
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal lo...
MURIEL SPARK
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Sandy felt warmly towards Miss Brodie at these times when she saw how she was misled in her idea of ...
MURIEL SPARK
[...] there were other people's Edinburghs quite different from hers [...]
MURIEL SPARK
But those of Miss Brodie's kind were great talkers and feminists and, like most femini...
MURIEL SPARK
I'm not saying anything against the Modern side.
Modern and Classical, they are equal...
MURIEL SPARK
It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.
MURIEL SPARK
But now they were all fifteen, there was a lot they did not tell each other.
MURIEL SPARK
 I'd rather deal with a rogue than a fool.
MURIEL SPARK
Nothing infuriates people more than their own lack of spiritual insight.
MURIEL SPARK
The word ‘education’ comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading ou...
MURIEL SPARK
I am putting old heads on your young shoulders,' Miss Brodie had told them at the time.
MURIEL SPARK
O where shall I find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies.
MURIEL SPARK
 One's prime is the moment one was born for. 
MURIEL SPARK
Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not qu...
MURIEL SPARK
Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underne...
MURIEL SPARK
In fact, it was the religion of Calvin of which Sandy felt deprived, or rather a specified recogniti...
MURIEL SPARK
The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to ap...
MURIEL SPARK
... flattening their scorn underneath the chariot wheels of her superiority.
MURIEL SPARK
It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due
MURIEL SPARK
4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.
MURIEL SPARK
Miss Brodie was easily the equal of both sisters together, she was the square on the hypotenuse of a...
MURIEL SPARK
One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your...
MURIEL SPARK
The word 'education' comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. T...
MURIEL SPARK
These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, ...
MURIEL SPARK
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
MURIEL SPARK
It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but...
MURIEL SPARK
For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the s...
MURIEL SPARK
Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your si...
MURIEL SPARK
The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. T...
MURIEL SPARK
She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.
MURIEL SPARK
Hildegard had long felt that sentimentality was a luxury she could not afford.
MURIEL SPARK
I am an advocate for older citizens. I want to change the image in this country people have of older...
MURIEL SAUNDERS
There is more to this sport than just the skill of placing your discs. You have to know how to outwi...
MURIEL ROWLAND
I truly believe that Betty Friedan was the most influential woman, not only of the 20th century but ...
MURIEL FOX
He came off as gruff, but the kids could see beneath that. He was about giving the kids opportunity.
MURIEL COOPER
You are stronger than you think. I have weathered many storms, tragedies, and heartaches in my life�...
MICHELLE MURIEL