Quotes about try page 20
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Prologue.
Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer
Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider
David Foster Wallace book The Pale King
Source: The Pale King (2011)
Context: "Maybe it's not metaphysics. Maybe it's existential. I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it's all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it's not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than "die," "pass away," the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday--... And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have pour in to make sure we're remembered, these'll last what-- a hundred years? two hundred?-- and they'll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I'm cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and that before maybe three of four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that's why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are... The post-production capitalist has something to do with the death of civics. But so does fear of smallness and death and everything being on fire."
Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) p. 12.
“He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.”
Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer
“She sat still, trying to hush her secret heart.”
Margaret Landon (1903–1993) writer, missionary
“Turn down the porn soundtrack! Trying to concentrate here!-Shane”
Rachel Caine (1962) American writer
“Morely: You're trying to make me [i]Amelie[/i]
Oliver: Goodness, no. You'd look terrible in a skirt”
Rachel Caine (1962) American writer
Source: Kiss of Death
David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist
Source: The Seeress of Kell
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Source: Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 101.
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: The Darkest Pleasure
Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker
Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
Source: How to Win Friends & Influence People
“My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something.”
Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer
Source: Raven's Shadow
“It is so hard trying to say what you mean.”
Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire
Source: Rose Under Fire
Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer
Source: Sandman Slim
“Sometimes… you have to try to forget people you love just so you can keep living.”
Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer
Source: Between Madison and Palmetto
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Nausea (1938)
Source: Nausea, The Wall and Other Stories
“When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Attributed
“You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.”
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
“I have a black sense of humor. You try living my life, see what color yours turns.”
Karen Marie Moning (1964) author
Source: Dreamfever
Canto CXX (the concluding Canto of the 1975 edition of The Cantos')
The Cantos
“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist
Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
Source: Young Miles
“Typical! I break my neck trying to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up!”
Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle
Source: Howl's Moving Castle
“You should try not to talk so much, friend. You'll sound far less stupid that way.
- Breeze”
Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer
Source: The Final Empire
Brian Andreas (1956) American artist
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas
Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay
Peeta and Katniss (p. 302)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: The Darkest Surrender
“Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Visions of Johanna
Source: Lyrics: 1962-2001
“People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.”
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Source: The Witch Of Portobello
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Dark Desires After Dusk
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer
Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Context: In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
