“Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.”

— Norman Mailer

As quoted in The Sunday Herald http://web.archive.org/web/20071112125539/http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1824217.0.norman_mailer_1923_2007.php [Scotland] (11 November 2007)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recogniti…" by Norman Mailer?

Norman Mailer photo

Norman Mailer165

American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film m… 1923–2007

Related quotes

“People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”

James Hilton book Lost Horizon

Source: Lost Horizon

“We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”

Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) American historian

Source: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

“Better too much spade work than too little! This work saves blood.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Lieber zuviel als zu wenig Spatengebrauch! Diese Arbeit spart Blut.
Source: Infanterie greift an (1937), p. 28.

“There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“In this line of work, too much paranoia can be worse than too little.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 5, “High Society” (p. 101)

“Happiness is a mysterious thing, to be found somewhere between too little and too much.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

Source: A Book of Simple Living

“Selfishness comes from too little self-love, not too much, as we compensate for our lack. There’s no such thing as caring for the self too much, just as there’s no such thing as too much genuine affection for others. Our world suffers from too little self-love and too much judgment, insecurity, fear, and mistrust. If we all cared about ourselves more, most of these ills would disappear.”

Anita Moorjani (1959) writer

“The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 368.

“If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

“You don’t have much time. If you think too long or too much, sometimes that is wrong. If you have one idea and know it from the first minute, do it. Shoot. I had so little space in the box. Think too much, the defender comes to block you.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

Related topics