Quotes about other page 13
“Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.”
Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States
Dean Karnazes (1962) American distance runner
Source: Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Variant: The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright
Source: Rent (1996)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker
Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
“Be so busy Improving your self that you have no time to criticize others.”
Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974
16 October 1939
My Day (1935–1962)
Source: This is My Story
“Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer
La gente sólo se casa cuando no tiene más remedio, por pánico o porque anda desesperada o para no perder a alguien a quien no soporta perder. Siempre hay mucha chaladura en lo que parece más convencional.
Source: Corazón tan blanco [A Heart So White] (1992), p. 121
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings.] A facsimile of the original is online at The digital Library https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792. The quotation is 7-8 lines up from the bottom of the first page. The phrase is most famous as an expression of Newton's but he was using a metaphor which in its earliest known form was attributed to Bernard of Chartres by John of Salisbury: Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants. Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. <br class="br">Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants. <br class="br">Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton
Variant: People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Source: Pensees
“Live, and be happy, and make others so.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
Justine Moritz in Ch. 8
Frankenstein (1818)
Vladimir Lenin book What Is to Be Done?
Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, A. "What is 'Freedom of Criticism'?", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
Source: What Is to Be Done?
Anthony Bourdain book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Medium Raw (2010)
Source: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
5 December 1919
A Moment's Liberty (1990)
Source: A Writer's Diary
Context: This last week L. has been having a little temperature in the evening, due to malaria, and that due to a visit to Oxford; a place of death and decay. I'm almost alarmed to see how entirely my weight rests on his prop. And almost alarmed to see how intensely I'm specialised. My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child – wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.
“Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.”
Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky
Source: A Hat Full of Sky
“The Service you do for others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.”
Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly
That which is seen and that which is not seen (Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas, 1850), the Introduction.
Context: In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it is seen. The others unfold in succession — they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account only of the visible effect; the other takes account of both the effects which are seen and those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
“Who knows, perhaps he doesn't care about me at all and look at the others in just the same way.”
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
J'accuse! (1898)
Context: These military tribunals have, decidedly, a most singular idea of justice.
This is the plain truth, Mr. President, and it is terrifying. It will leave an indelible stain on your presidency. I realise that you have no power over this case, that you are limited by the Constitution and your entourage. You have, nonetheless, your duty as a man, which you will recognise and fulfill. As for myself, I have not despaired in the least, of the triumph of right. I repeat with the most vehement conviction: truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. Today is only the beginning, for it is only today that the positions have become clear: on one side, those who are guilty, who do not want the light to shine forth, on the other, those who seek justice and who will give their lives to attain it. I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.
Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique
Interviews with Betty Friedan, Janann Sherman, ed. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, ISBN 1578064805, p. x.
Source: The Feminine Mystique
Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
“Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it.”
Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
“We've had this date with each other from the beginning.”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
David Brin book The Postman
Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 267)
Variant: It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
As quoted in Values of the Wise: Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 120
This is very similar to the expression by Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse: Dune (1985): "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
Context: It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
“What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself.”
Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth
A New Earth (2005)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Joke during his 1965 campaign for Governor of California, as quoted by Leo E. Litwak in The New York Times Magazine (14 November 1965), p. 174 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50F13FC3B591B7A93C6A8178AD95F418685F9. <br class="br">Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. <br class="br">As quoted in The Reagan Wit (1981) by Bill Adler, p. 30 <br class="br">1960s
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Variant: Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.
Source: The Glass Menagerie
M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“When people cared about each other, they always found a way to make it work.”
Nicholas Sparks book True Believer
Source: True Believer
“There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.”
John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman
Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Ch. 13, p. 99
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher
As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
“The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.”
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet
“Sometimes I sits and thinks. Other times I sits and drinks, but mostly I just sits.”
Neal Cassady (1926–1968) American cultural figure of 1950s and 1960s
Source: First Third & Other Writings - Revised & Expanded Edition Together With A New Prologue
“Real living is living for others.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson
Variant: December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tad Williams (1957) novelist
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 718).
Context: “Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course...”
George Jones (1931–2013) American musician, singer and songwriter
Source: I Lived to Tell It All (1996, ebook 2014), Page 205.
“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
“Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.”
Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist
posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
“The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.”
Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist
Source: "The Unknown", line 16, cited from Collected Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920), p. 116.
“My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.”
Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan
Cecil Graham, Act III
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director
“Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.”
Fay Weldon (1931) English author, essayist and playwright
“For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Source: A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas
“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
Malachy McCourt (1931) Irish-American actor, writer and politician
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
Source: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns