Erik Pevernagie Quotes

A piece of art comes to life, when we can feel, it is breathing, when it talks to us and starts raising questions. It may dispel biased perceptions; make us recognize ignored fragments and remember forsaken episodes of our life story. Art may sometimes even be nasty and disturbing, if we don’t want to consent to its philosophy or concept, but it might, in the end, perhaps reconcile us with ourselves. (When is Art?)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Some don’t want to be happy, inasmuch as they undergo happiness merely as languor and yawning. They are dissatisfied with a bland and vacuous state of glee and, instead, prefer to keep on running like raging bulls through the whims and quirks of life. In reality, their dissatisfaction is their contentment. (Happiness blowing in the wind )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Is happiness a sort of blissful state of mind or just a kind of surreal propensity? It may be hard to recognize its very nature, if we remain guilelessly confined in a state of woeful unawareness or in a no-man’s-land of emotions. In their dogged and obstinate quest for the zenith of happiness, many forget to take pleasure in the small things of everyday and, thus, become disgruntled and depressed instead, which leads them to a mire of gloom. (C’est quand le bonheur “)

~ Erik Pevernagie

We need not be afraid of expecting the unexpected, but let us wheedle each instant we enjoy and endear each happy moment we encounter; let us watch each step we take and each move we make, ever since happiness is a loving and appealing fairy, but utterly frail and vulnerable. (Happy days are back again)

~ Erik Pevernagie

We only realize what happiness is about, after it has slammed the door to our inattention; and killing silence has deafened the tunefulness of our life. (Happy days are back again)

~ Erik Pevernagie

When love has left us in the lurch and nothing ever strikes a chord anymore, we may come to realize a vacuum of the lost vibrations of happiness and an absence of the ethereal and exalting feel of harmony that we only become aware of, after time passes by and everything has expired. (“Amour en friche”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Let us dare to dream and shoot for the moon. Even if we don’t fetch the moon, a million stars may fill us with wonder. (Happiness blowing in the wind)

~ Erik Pevernagie

When a soothing wind blows gently love through the thistledown of expectations, hope may inveigle the future for timeless care and tenderness to be anchored in a bay of good luck. (Happiness blowing in the wind )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Beauty is not a warrant for wellbeing and so does happiness not hinge on social success, but is only tangible via intricate, meandering discovery journeys in the mind. (Absence of beauty was like hell)

~ Erik Pevernagie

In the architecture of their life some may display Potemkin happiness in view of hiding the dark features of their fair weather relationship, preferring to set up a window dressing of fake satisfaction rather than being rejected as emotional outcasts. (Absence of beauty was like hell)

~ Erik Pevernagie

People die from lack of shared empathy and affinity. By establishing social connectedness, we give hope a chance and the other can become heaven. ( Le ciel c'est l'autre )

~ Erik Pevernagie

When scorching passion only leaves ashes of unfulfilled dreams, hope may entice the sprinkling magic of our imagination into livening up the footlights on a new stage of life. (Taken for a ride)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Hope may inspire and inveigle us, but we cannot just live on hope. Certainly, love can be hope, but it is merely a contingency, since it might either mend our life or break our heart. (Waiting for the smoke signals)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Emotional predictive profiling may help identify contingent fissures in the stature of endangered relationships. Still and all, it might be wise to let the genie out of problematic bottles in the first place, in advance of scouting the causes of surreptitious subliminal convulsions. (Beware of the neighbor)

~ Erik Pevernagie

When relationships lose their pitch through lack of interest and become stale or unbearable through enduring stealthy backbiting, the emotional house of cards is under attack. A painstaking reshuffle, however, may brand a new choice of life and create energy for positive thinking, whereas remaining bogged down in dispiriting situations and staying clogged up with immaterial hassle may only spawn forlorn deadlocks.. (Mes cliques et mes claques)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Relationships may become wrecked by a quirky syndrome: the “Ain't broke, don't fix”-syndrome. When there is no interaction in the neural network and no breakthrough into the mind but only a shallow skin experience, living together might be very torturous. If a heartfelt bond has not been molded, nothing can be broken and thus nothing needs to be fixed. (“I wonder what went wrong.”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

When we take the time to break free from the tyranny of Time and learn to listen to the sound of unspoken words, we discern the hot air behind the frenzy of the wheeling and dealing around. (“Wheeling and dealing »)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Fear has always been a very important whistleblower. Our emotion and our history can provoke fear that may arrest us at any time or at any place. Above and beyond, fear might be contagious and its scent, sometimes sensual, sometimes mystical or animal, can exude the musty and arcane smell of destiny. (One could still feel the smell of fear )

~ Erik Pevernagie

The skeletons of the past must not hold back the dream of a new life, even though fear and regret, guilt and remorse may unsettle us during the effort to give our future a new home. (“Into a new life”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Woe betides anyone getting in the way of people that keep on muddying the waters, throwing up smoke screens and clouding issues, so as to conceal their dubious motivations. (Could the milkman be the devil?)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Silence can be breathing space and spawn release and wellness in a time of appalling inflation of words. But silence may be intolerably screaming, if it means absence of communication, deficiency in friendship and emotional deficit. (« A gap of silence”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Let’s watch out for the unpredictability and the wildcat jumps of contrarian people, whose sole interests are soaring targets at high-speed, at all costs and without any consideration. Perceptive understanding may help us discover the hidden actualities behind the ‘appearances’. .(Mama. Meine Bäume wachsen bis in den Himmel)

~ Erik Pevernagie

When people’s parallel truth collides with their real truth, they may have a hard time in subduing all the fanciful items and characters of their invented world. (“The day the mirror was talking back”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

If the whole world is in a rush and people are out of step with themselves, they fail to catch that quirky aura and that special quality of life that feeds our soul-searching frame of mind and that builds a coveted haven, giving recognition and self-reliance. (The unbearable heaviness of being”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

People who don’t construe their life and don’t frame their own tale, stay on the sidelines, remain only an act without a story and turn into an empty box. Out-of-the-box thinking and inventiveness remains then merely wishfull thinking. ( Everybody his story )

~ Erik Pevernagie

A thousand times, people may have touched each other, but never ever sensed a single vein of oneness or complicity in the wilderness of their inner world, since obdurate mental impediments have been barricading the road to understanding and propinquity. (“A thousand times”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Many buy gadgets they don’t really need, with money they don’t have, for people they don’t actually care for, while infringing their corporeal and financial capacities, in order to pay doctors and psychiatrists.( Keeping up with the Joneses)

~ Erik Pevernagie

What makes people tick? Life can be a trap of ennui, but imagery may be a redemptive escape from dullness. The iconic power and exuberance of images generate an inexorable addiction that needs to be gratified without respite. Here and now! (Give me more images)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Relatedness is vital in a time when so many people suffer from social deafness. Emotional insensitivity being caused by a redoubtable “tin ear” makes it impossible to hear any signs of empathy or capture the vibrant qualities of ‘sharing’. (Only needed a light )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Rumours should be juicy and gossips must be mouth-watering, since they have to uplift and make people feel better. Tittle-tattle can have a swift ripple effect and when the ball is rolling very fast, it kick-starts a flood of moral destruction. “Schadenfreude” can, then, be fully enjoyed. (“Juicy rumours”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. (The grass was greener over there)

~ Erik Pevernagie

If bees die, people will die. Only ignorance never dies! (Why step out of nature ?)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Expectations are at war, if good feeling and discomfort clash. When we are expecting zest and joy, our good karma may be ousted by distress and frustration, if negative downbeat waves are emitted. Just with a feel of realism, without prejudice, should we step into the future. What will be, will be. Only the fortune of war will tell, since life may be war or peace. (Fish for silence.)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Let us keep enough money to enjoy each breath we take, but definitely not too much, if we don’t want to spoil the fragrance of our dreams and the poem of life.

~ Erik Pevernagie

Dwelling among shipwrecked dreams and losing oneself in wishful thinking cannot be a solution to tribulations. Identifying cracks and apprehending the defaults in one's life is essential to find a way to get out of a ghetto and to start a search for a new haven. (The world was somewhere else )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Instead of breaking or cherry-picking the rules, many just follow the inner rules, which have been instilled during their lifetime and have subtly permeated their thinking. They value rules, as it offers the ravishment of a securing, ceremonial rhythm in life and it prevents them from breaking free from their cocoon, all the more because freedom can be so scaring and exhausting. (When forgetting the rules of the game )

~ Erik Pevernagie

In the rough-and-tumble play of politics, dog-whistle messages are copiously dispatched over the heads of the grassroots people that cannot see the writing on the wall and have to remain in the cold, like dumb puppets on a string. (What after bowling alone? )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Women emerging like aliens in a hesitant future, in a men’s world with impervious codes, may feel like dots in an uncharted territory. Discovering the crucial points, which don't line up with the unbearability of reality, may be a key to the right compass in life. ( Terra incognita)

~ Erik Pevernagie

Many men remain spoiled boys that have never grown up. Women are prepared to raise them and take pain with patience, both as a condescendant contribution to supercilious compassion and as a proof of the eminence of their sense of worth. (Prêt-à-penser / Ready-to-wear thinking)

~ Erik Pevernagie

It’s hard to safeguard a genuine life course, when love tips over from endearing care into tedium, through laziness of imagination or loss of interest, and the storyline becomes barren and desolate, insipidly dull, turning into a threadbare act with the same trite modus operandi. “The same procedure as every year, James!” (Things needing to be changed)

~ Erik Pevernagie