Quotes about well
page 2

Joseph Goebbels photo

“In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers!
The people are on the streets -- rampaging and protesting. The magnates are sitting at the green table and calmly finish their game.
Old Europe is dying.
Well, it's a crazy world! Thrift, Horatio!
As if by a mysterious power one feels compelled to go out onto the streets. The thoughts wander outside to the stage which is portraying a drama of world history -- not an edifying one, but still a drama. It gives the earnest observer a lot to think about.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

In den Zeitungen wird gehetzt und geschimpft. Diese verantwortungslosen Schmieranten!
Das Volk ist auf der Straße, randaliert und demonstriert. Die Herren sitzen am grünen Tisch und spielen seelenruhig ihre Partie zu Ende.
Die alte Europa geht in die Binsen.
Ja, es ist eine tolle Welt! Wirtschaft, Horatio!
Man wird wie von einer geheimnisvollen Macht auf die Straße gezogen. Die Gedanken sind draußen, wo sich ein Stück Weltgeschichte abspielt -- kein erhebendes zwar, aber ein Stück. Der ernsthafte Zuschauer hat viel dabei nachzudenken.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Jackson Pollock photo
Martin Luther photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Giacomo Puccini photo

“There are many things that I want to tell you -- well, really, only one -- but that one is as large as the ocean -- as the ocean is deep and infinite, so is my love for you and it will be for all my life!”

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Italian composer

Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire, o una sola, ma grande come il mare, come il mare profonda ed infinita...Sei il mio amore e tutta la mia vita!
Mimi
Act IV Sono andante?
La bohème (1896)

Zaha Hadid photo

“Having a period of - well, austerity, shall we say - certainly humbles you.”

Zaha Hadid (1950–2016) Iraqi-British architect

Quoted in the Evening Standard, Tue 1 May 2012, p. 16.

Yoko Ono photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell
Misattributed

Charles de Gaulle photo

“When we were children, we often played war. We had a fine collection of lead soldiers. My brothers would take different countries: Xavier had Italy; Pierre, Germany. Or they would swap around. Well, I, gentlemen, always had France.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Reminiscing during an ocean voyage to Tahiti, quoted in The Atlantic, November 1960
Early life

Ronnie Coleman photo

“I wasn't given the genetics for football. This is my gift right here. I was always well-built. You can't do certain sports without the genetics, and talent, too, of course.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

Ellen Mazo (May 1, 1999) "Building the Image of a Role Model", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. A-1.

Muhammad photo
Monte Melkonian photo
Erwin Rommel photo
Mikhail Bulgakov photo

“Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it.”

Book One in the chapter 'Schizophrenia, as Predicted', B/O
The Master and Margarita (1967)

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

Albert Schweitzer photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo

“Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea.”

"Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/reasons-of-state.htm (Fédéralisme, socialisme et antithéologisme), presented originally as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867)
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom" also known as "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" (September 1867)
Context: Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i. e., the emancipation of nations and men.

Hammurabi photo
Begum Rokeya photo

“I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry.”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

When she was asked, in 1926, to chair the Bengal women's educational conference. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/28/rokeya-sakhawat-hossain-hero-tahmima-anam
Context: Although I am grateful to you for the respect that you have expressed towards me by inviting me to preside over the conference, I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry.

Sun Tzu photo

“The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter V · Forces

Scarlett Johansson photo

“Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters' sex appeal sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters.”

Scarlett Johansson (1984) American actress, model, and singer

Of her role as Black Widow in Iron Man 2, in Teen Hollywood (3 May 2010) http://www.teenhollywood.com/2010/05/03/interview-gwyneth-and-scarlett-iron-mans-ladies
Context: Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters' sex appeal sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters. When you have a sexy secretary, or a girl swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, you know that’s innately sexy, but the fact is that these characters are intelligent. They’re ambitious. They’re motivated and calculated to some degree.

George Orwell photo

“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 3
Context: For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, 'I shall be starving in a day or two--shocking, isn't it?' And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

Romain Rolland photo
George Orwell photo
Barack Obama photo
Albert Einstein photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Desmond Tutu photo
Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo
Marilyn Manson photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Tamora Pierce photo
P.T. Barnum photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Oscar Wilde photo

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Khaled Hosseini photo
Jack London photo

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
As quoted in "They Came to Write in Hawai‘i" by Joseph Theroux, in Spirit of Aloha (March/April 2007)

Fernando Pessoa photo

“We are two abysses — a well staring at the sky.”

Ibid., p. 48
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Somos dois abismos — um poço fitando o céu.

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Sylvia Plath photo
William Osler photo

“The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 575.

Susan B. Anthony photo
George Orwell photo

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

Source: "Why I Write" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/write.html, Gangrel (Summer 1946)
Context: Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.

René Magritte photo
Jack Kornfield photo

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

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

Address in Des Moines, Iowa (4 November 1910)
1910s

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow what a ride!”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Variant: Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Yukio Mishima photo
Zig Ziglar photo

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in ‪Primary Education‬ (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody.
Misattributed

Douglas Adams photo
Rick Riordan photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“Happiness is not a goal… it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

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

Variant: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 95
Context: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.

Johnny Cash photo
Rick Riordan photo
Viktor E. Frankl photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Denzel Washington photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Martin Luther photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Christine de Pizan photo
Katherine Paterson photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

Mark Twain photo
Katharine Hepburn photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Martha Graham photo
Nancy Mitford photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Christine de Pizan photo

“If it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.”

Si la coustume estoit de mettre les petites filles a l'escole, et que communement on les fist apprendre les sciences comme on fait aux filz, qu'elles apprendroient aussi parfaitement et entenderoient les subtilités de toutes les arz et sciences comme ils font.
Part I, ch. 27, p. 63.
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405)
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Isaac Bashevis Singer photo
Ervin László photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Martin Luther photo
Eric Clapton photo

“He is a great person, as well as a great musician. And this guy sings like he was born down below Mississippi!”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

B.B. King http://www1.gitarrebass.de/magazine/0008/top10.htm
About

Ben Shapiro photo
John Wayne Gacy photo

“The idea that I'm a homosexual thrill killer, that I stroll down the streets and stalk young boys and slaughter them… Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule, you knew damn well that I was never out there.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Biography - John Wayne Gacy: Monster in Disguise. A & E Home Video, 2000. Watched March 1, 2010.

Joan Baez photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Pat Conroy photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“The most stimulating and encouraging thought is that you, dearest father, and my dear sister, are well, that I am an honest German, and that if I am not always permitted to talk I can think what I please; but that is all.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Paris, 29 April 1778), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)

Socrates photo

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo