James Richardson: Use

James Richardson is American poet. Explore interesting quotes on use.
James Richardson: 178   quotes 6   likes

“Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”

James Richardson

#92
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Love , Books , Feeling , Thinking

“First he gathered what he needed. Then he needed to keep gathering what he used to need.”

James Richardson

#314
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Think of all the smart people made stupid by flaws of character. The finest watch isn’t fine long when used as a hammer.”

James Richardson

#108
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

People , Stupidity , Thinking

“The drives were nature’s first provision: thinking was added later, to get us around the world’s obstacles to them.”

James Richardson

#126
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

World , Nature , Thinking

“The viruses that co-opt the machinery of our cells; the stories we allow to enter and explain us.”

James Richardson

#27
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Embarrassment is the greatest teacher, but since its lessons are exactly those we have tried hardest to conceal from ourselves, it may teach us, also, to perfect our self-deception.”

James Richardson

#373
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Teachers , Perfection

“The man who sticks to his plan will become what he used to want to be.”

James Richardson

#349
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. … Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt.”

James Richardson

#48
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Thinking , Sense , Heart

“Hasn’t there … been a little too much zeal in our reproof of children and friends for yielding to the temptations we ourselves find it most difficult to resist? We punish where we can least afford to sympathize. Of all the horrors of the daily news, it seems hardest to imagine the kind of cruelty that is intensified by the pain of its victims, but whenever we feel sympathy would weaken us, we are a little closer to the torturer.”

James Richardson

#449
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Pain , Children , Feeling , Imagination

“Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.”

James Richardson

#57
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Faith