Quotes about thing

page 14

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

“Little things affect little minds.”

“Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them”

“I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.”

“The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”

“I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.”

“Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But… ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just… well, things happening one after another.”

“Art is not a thing; it is a way.”

“The things men did or felt they had to do.”

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”

“Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.”

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”

“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”

“I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

“Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us that the Lord will provide.”

“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

“The More we value things, the less we value ourselves”

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

“The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.”

“I wanted to do things to Richard that would make the sun grow cold with horror.”

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”

“Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”

“But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.”

“When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.”

“It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do -need to do- more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.”

“That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

“And the cost of a thing it will be remembered as the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.”

“I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.”

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.”

“Keep things at arm's length… If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.”

“The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”

“That's one form of magic, of course."
"What, just knowing things?"
"Knowing things that other people don't know.”

“True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.”

“The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

“Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

“Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house.”

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

“Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.”

“Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.”

“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”

“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”

“Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.”

“For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.”

“You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.”

“Change can be weird or even queer. But change has to happen for things to grow--for us to grow. And change isn't so bad when you're not in it alone.”

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

“To look wise is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.”

“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”

“That the truest experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.”

“Things always become obvious after the fact”

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.”

“All great and precious things are lonely.”

“I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.”

“The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.”

“… you must always be yourself, and do things at your own pace. Someday, you'll catch up.”

“I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.”

“I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.”

“This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.”

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”

“Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human.”

“The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.”

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

“He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest — he had seen beautiful things and horrible things — but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”

“It appeared that nobody ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but that was what music was for.”

“People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.”

“The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“He has artistry," he repeated. "Because that's what it takes to blow things up. And cook his arm.”

“Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true.”

“How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?”

“I believe in only one thing, the power of human will.”

“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”

“Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.”

“Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.”

“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.”

“If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. (Lazarus Long)”

“Beautiful things don't ask for attention.”

“The time has come
The walrus said
To talk of many things:
Of shoes- and ships-
And sealing wax-
Of cabbages and kings-
And why the sae is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.”

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

“Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.”

“Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”

“On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.”

“The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.”

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth…. Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.”

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”