“Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck.”

— Jerome David Salinger , book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it."
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

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Jerome David Salinger 83

American writer 1919–2010

Related quotes

“"Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it."”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“I can't stand Willy wet-leg,
can't stand him at any price.
He's resigned, and when you hit him
he lets you hit him twice.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Willy Wet Leg (1929)

“Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

As quoted in The Power of Choice (2007) by Joyce Guccione, p. 199
also attributed to Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and Les Brown (1912–2001)
Misattributed

“People ask me often (was) the Nobel Prize the thing you were aiming for all your life? And I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn’t get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.”

Gertrude B. Elion (1918–1999) American biochemist and pharmacologist

Gertrude Elion https://www.famousscientists.org/gertrude-b-elion/

“If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Source: In the Harbor

“Doing good isn't [that] hard. It's just doing a lot of good that is very hard. If your aims are modest, you can accomplish an awful lot. When your aims become elevated beyond a reasonable level, you not only don't accomplish much, you can cause a great deal of damage.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Source: Interview in the London Times Higher Education Supplement (1987).

“You know,” he said, “this is why I love you so much.”
Her tone was heartbreakingly warm. “What do you mean?”
You don’t ask me to go inside because it’s cold. You just want to make it easier for me to be where I want to stand.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Avenged

“Try a rocket launcher. Think maybe you could manage to hit me with that?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“It's not funny, Jace," Alec interrupted, starting to his feet. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?"

"Yes," Jace said kindly. "It'll do you good-- try to think of it as endurance training.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

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