Quotes about use
page 15

“Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Thinking, Sense

“To begin with, let us take the following motto… Literature is Love. Now we can continue.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Despair

Source: Despair

Love, Literature

“But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

World, Sense

“You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

John Muir book Our National Parks

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West

Life, People, Home, Mountain

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Dependency

“At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

School, Light

“Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Question

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

William C. Dement (1928) American sleep researcher

Dreams, Night

“We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Love

“A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Faith, Perfection

“We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Help

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us,
half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Source: Duino Elegies

Secret, Hope, Tree, Housing

“A weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“I think we deserve people who really, really love us.”

Alicia Keys (1981) American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress

Love, People, Thinking

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love, God, Peace, Faith

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Interview for KFRC RKO Radio (8 December 1980)

“Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Error, Time, Success, Past

“To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Life, World, Science

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Death, Sense, Time

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Death is part of who we are. It guides
us. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Death, Parting, Madness

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

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

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Variant: Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson

Cute

“O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

- Romeo”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Beauty, Night

“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies and are under their almost constant fire. We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into a an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation.”

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?

Fight

“Welcome the view that the things which you think are wrecking your life - like your thoughts and emotions, or illness and death - are actually gifts for your transformation… Whether life presents us with a pleasant sound or an unpleasant sound, a pleasant smell or an unpleasant smell, a pleasant thought or an unpleasant thought, it's sheer delight because instead of identifying with the experience, we simply touch it and let it go.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Life, Death, Thinking

“The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Indifference

“I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”

Kinky Friedman (1944) Singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician

Wedding, Marriage, Support

“Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let's be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Source: A Family Collection: Life on the Farm and in the Country, Making a Home; the Ways of the World, a Woman's Role

Fashion, Madness

“The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we would want to hear.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

Thinking, Time

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294

World, Education, Sense

“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

18 December 1831
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Men, History, Light, Learning

“Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain

Soul

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly Pogo

This is derived from the famous statement of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on the "War of 1812": "We have met the enemy and they are ours". It appeared in a "modern day" poster for the first Earth Day in April 1970, and next in the comic strip itself in August 1970 in Porky Pine's mouth, and was re-used by Kelly in a subsequent Earth Day poster (1971), and further strips and in the title of the book Pogo : We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us (1972). A similar statement was actually used by Kelly many years earlier in his introduction http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm to The Pogo Papers (1953) which he closes with these comments: :Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. :::Forward! Pogo comic strip (1948 - 1975), Pogo

“Women are the bloodthirsty sex," said Ric sadly. "We get the reputation, but it is only because the women stand behind us, and say, 'Kill it. Squish it.”

Patricia Briggs book Hunting Ground

Source: Hunting Ground

Women, Sex

“… but it doesn't feel crazy to us.
It feels like what we do.”

Sharon Creech book Heartbeat

Source: Heartbeat

Feeling

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything - that is how, it is between people who are each other's first memories”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

People, Memory

“I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other's company.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Thinking

“Ach, people are always telling us not to do things" said Rob Anybody, "that's how we ken the most interesting things to do.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

People

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Back To Work, Time

“We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.”

Bernard Malamud The Natural

Source: The Natural (1952), p. 152

Life, Suffering, Learning, Happiness

“Be of good courage all is before you, and time passed in the difficult is never lost… What is required of us is that we live the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Courage, Learning, Time

“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world… enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: Speeches And Letters Of Abraham Lincoln, 1832 1865

World, Art, Communication, Time

“How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Source: Lethal People

Hope

“We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it.”

Yasmina Khadra (1955) Algerian writer

Source: Swallows of Kabul

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Books, Music, Reading, Country

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. (Jo March)”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential to be the comic stories the next.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Life, Understanding

“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Which was the Dream?" (1898)

Law, Loss

“The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.”

Kóbó Abe (1924–1993) Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor

World

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)
Variant: A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Context: Attention and activity lead to mistakes as well as to successes; but a life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Deep, Life, Heart Touching, Powerful

“However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. Whatever cannot become the object of discourse - the truly sublime, the truly horrible or the uncanny - may find human voice through which to sound into the world, but it is not exactly human. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

World, Learning

“What makes night within us may leave stars.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Variant: Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three

Deep, Star, Night

“Our partner's sexuality does not belong to us. It isn't just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Life

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

People, World, Understanding

“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chicago, IL http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (17 June 1912) 1910s

Country

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Time

“If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

Feeling, Reality, Personality

“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Faith, Perfection

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Wise, Life, Life, Beauty

“By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Life, Truth, Dreams

“Chance made us sisters. Hearts made us friends.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Sister, Chance, Heart

“I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Hate, Literature

“I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Thinking

“Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world… We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.”

John Powell (1645–1713) American Jesuit priest

Source: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?: 25 Guidelines for Good Communication

World, Communication, Happiness

“The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”

Tamora Pierce book Melting Stones

Source: Melting Stones

Fools, Learning

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 172
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Teachers' Day

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course--the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

“In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Sense

“A little water clears us of this deed.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Water

“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
"Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

Pain, Hurt, Happiness

“We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.”

Philip Yancey book What's So Amazing About Grace?

Source: What's So Amazing About Grace?

Love, Way

““Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss….” He turned to me. “But every once in a while you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.””

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped (2001)

“We take spiritual initiation when we become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine without us.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Source: Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate

“The point is not how we use a tool, but how it uses us.”

Nick Joaquín (1917–2004) Filipino writer

Source: Culture and History

“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will—we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. “We can't win,” we moan. “They won't let us win.”However, if we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we're already on the way to success.”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 232

People, Way, Problem, Thinking

“Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“… for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Housing

“Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Life, Time

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

People

“Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing… I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

World, Sleep, Betrayal

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Feeling

“If historical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”

Ludwig von Mises book Human Action

Source: Human Action (1949), Chapter XV. The Market, § 4 The Scope and Method of Catallactics

“I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Love, Art, Reality, Forgetting

“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Life, Soul, Sense, Joy

“Love is only a word, until we decide to let it possess us with all its force.
Love is only a word, until someone arrives to give it meaning.
Don't give up. Remember, it's always the last key on the key ring that opens the door.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Love

“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

God, Sleep, Time

“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

World, Law

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

God, Boy, Sport

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

“Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: What I Believe

Science

“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”

Lawrence Durrell book Justine

Source: Justine

Silence, Dependency

“Our past may explain why we're suffering but we must not use it as an excuse to stay in bondage.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

Suffering, Past

“The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=kfYEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+government+is+us+we+are+the+government+you+and+I%22&pg=PA521#v=onepage at Asheville, North Carolina (9 September 1902) 1900s

Quotes about use page 15

Quotes about use
page 15