Quotes about well
page 4

“Many experiments with the Technology of Light are being undertaken in Russia. This is because the Space Brothers set up a community in that country 15 years ago. Russia was chosen because it was such a closed society, where commercial pressures did not affect scientific research. Today, says Maitreya, the Russians are well ahead of the rest of the world in this field. That is why Russia leads the way in calling for arms reductions.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Share International Magazine

World, Way, Communication, Light

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extend, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people live under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint, the British ruling class had their points.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Men, People, Secret, Peace

“There are no buildings that have been built by chance, remote from the human society where they have grown and its needs, hopes and understandings, even as there are no arbitrary lines and motiveless forms in the work of the masons. The life and existence of every great, beautiful and useful building, as well as its relation to the place where it has been built, often bears within itself complex and mysterious drama and history.”

Ivo Andrič book The Bridge on the Drina

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 2

Life, Beauty, Hope, History

“To begin well is not a trifling thing, but yet not far from a trifling thing.”

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

Diogenes Laertius

“First, do it. Second, do it well. Third, do it well and fast — that means you're a professional.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

http://www.americanparkour.com/content/view/680/243/

“Well begun is half done.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“The biggest battle than all the world wars put together is when the mind wants something while the body craves for something else as well.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

War, World

“We may allow the idea of The Origin Sin to endlessly haunt our minds, but we are well ensured that it is not our concern.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Idea

“I've got the economy set up well for him. No facts, no consequences, they can just have a cartoon.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

In response to Donald Trump's election victory https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/politics/obama-reaction-trump-election-benjamin-rhodes.html. (November 2016) 2016

“Having lived in an oriental country I have developed a certain indifference to miracles, and I well know that having delusions, or even being an outright lunatic, is quite compatible with what is loosely called genius.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: "As I Please," Tribune (3 March 1944)
http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/

Country, Indifference

“It just happened. I like to sing, and well, I just started singing and folks just started listening. I can't tell folks that I worked and learned and studied, and overcame disappointments, because I didn't.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Source: Pop Chronicles, Show 7 – The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19754/m1/; C. Robert Jennings, " Elvis Lives! http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/doc/155809300.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Feb+18%2C+1968&author=Jennings%2C+C+Robert&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+%281923-Current+File%29&edition=&startpage=M28&desc=ELVIS+LIVES%21", 1968-Feb-18, L.A. Times Magazine, p. M28.

Disappointment, Study, Learning, Singing

“Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well entitled to his surname of Divino... [T]he auburn locks seem only prevented from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star which forms the glory: everything which can even be conceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes, beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular object. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exquisitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53

World, Beauty, Star, Light

“Every action of man, the highest as well as the lowest, is egoistic; for it flows from a certain individuality, a certain I, with a sufficient motive, and can in no way be omitted. To go into the reason of the difference of characters is not the place here; we have simply to accept it as a fact. Now it is just as impossible for the merciful man to let his neighbor starve as it is for the hard-hearted man to help the poor. Each of the two acts according to his character, his nature, his ego, his happiness, consequently egoistically; for if the merciful one did not dry the tears of others, would he be happy? And if the hard-hearted one relieved the suffering of others, would he be satisfied?”

Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) German poet and philosopher

Source: Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Ethik, § 11 ISBN 978-1494963262

Happiness, Way, Motivation, Nature

“I have lost a bit of my sight, much of my hearing. At conferences, I can't see the presentations and can't hear well. But I think more now than when I when I was twenty. The body can do whatever it likes. I am not the body: I am the mind.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Source: In an interview with Paolo Giordano, 100 anni di futuro, Wired, n. 1, marzo 2009. Source: Cited by Elisabetta Intini, Addio alla signora della scienza, le sue frasi più belle http://www.focus.it/scienza/addio-alla-signora-della-scienza-le-sue-frasi-piu-belle, Focus.it, 31 dicembre 2012. Source: Cited in Addio Rita Levi Montalcini, le frasi più belle di un genio gentile http://www.vanityfair.it/news/italia/12/12/30/rita-levi-montalcini-morta-frasi, VanityFair.it, 30 dicembre 2012.

Thinking

“I don't need anyone else's approval.
If I happen to have admirers, well that is just a plus.
I don't require other's opinion of me.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1993 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from [hhttps://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ the original] on May 27, 2022. As quoted in: Louise Melling (Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU) (September 23, 2020): For Justice Ginsburg, Abortion Was About Equality. In: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527144342/https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality from the original https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality on May 27, 2022. 1990s

Life, Decision

“Business is a lot like tennis - those who don´t serve well end up loosing.”

Unknown author

Business

“In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

Pleasure, Knowledge

“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”

Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist

World

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Kiss, Night, Good Night

“You can't leave me alone," she said, following him into the living room.
"Yes," he corrected, "I can. You'll be perfectly safe."
"The front door's off!"
"Well, yes. You'll be perfectly safe as long as they don't come through the front door.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Life

“Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's… well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-"
"Go for the throat”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

Reading

“I think we have different value systems." —Arthur
"Well mine's better." —Ford”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Thinking

“You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

War

“In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Love, Sense, Time, Heart

“As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.”

Cleveland Amory book The Cat Who Came for Christmas

Source: The Cat Who Came for Christmas

Cats, Time, Patience

“What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 2"
Source: The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Love

“The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“All's well that ends well.”

William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well

Source: All's Well That Ends Well

“It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”

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

Speech before the Colorado Live Stock Association, Denver, Colorado (August 29, 1910); in The New Nationalism (1910), p. 52; also inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
1910s

Nature

“Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

People

“Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede (1859)
Context: These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Truth, Feeling, Motivation, Falseness

“You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling, Thinking

“I was doing well enough until you came along and kicked my stone over, and out I came, all moss and eyes.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

“You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Feeling, Time, Animals

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

People, Thinking

“Do you smoke?

Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.

I'm glad to hear of it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. […]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Women, Marriage, War, Children

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Beauty, Peaceful

“Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Wisdom, God, Fools

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Money

“Well, when one's lost, I suppose it's good advice to stay where you are until someone finds you.”

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

“Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins, but there's no such thing as what might have been. That's a waste of time; drive you outta your mind”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Time

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley 1910s Variant: Everybody needs beauty... places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.

Beauty, Soul, Nature

“I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Pierre or the Ambiguities

Men, Soul, Sea

“There’s a really stupid saying: When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. Well, I have a better saying: When life hands you a lemon, shove that lemon up its stupid butt.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Life, Stupidity

“And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love, Life, Death

“Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hope, Feeling

“The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 8.

Sex

“Remember me? I'm back to my old self again. No responsibilities, no attachments, no encumbrances. I don't want to own anything, love anyone, or get too attached to people, places or things. It's a rule that seems to work well for me.”

Danielle Steel Second Chance

Source: Second Chance

Love, People

“In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart… well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

Understanding

“The finest actor is he who play the comedy of life perfectly, as i aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, weep well, laugh well and die well, it is all pure acting, because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal spirit who is real- who cannot act, who-is and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body's lies”

Marie Corelli (1855–1924) British writer

Source: The Sorrows of Satan or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire

Life

“Well, label me very impressed and ship me to Carthak!”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love

“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Time, Hurt

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

Men

“So when the moon's only partly full, you only feel a little wolfy?"
"You could say that."
"Well, you can go ahead and hang your head out the car window if you feel like it."
"I'm a werewolf, not a golden retriever.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Cars, Feeling

“Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Way

“To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Variant: To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
Source: Discours de réception, Séance De L'académie Française (introductory speech at a session of the French Academy), 24th December 1896, on Ferdinand de Lesseps' work on the Suez Canal.
Context: To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Dreams, Motivational, Deep, Success

“But let me tell you this: sometimes at night, when I look up at the stars, an see the whole sky jus laid out there, don't you think I ain't rememberin it all. I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been. An then, all of a sudden, I'm forty, fifty, sixty years ole, you know?
Well, so what? I may be a idiot, but most of the time, anyway, I tried to do the right thing-- an dreams is jus dreams, ain't they? So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain't led no hum-drum life.
You know what I mean?”

Winston Groom Forrest Gump

Source: Forrest Gump

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.”

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

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: You need a great many qualities to make a successful man on a nine or an eleven; and just so you need a great many different qualities to make a good citizen. In the first place, of course it is al most tautological to say that to make a good citizen the prime need is to be decent, clean in thought, clean in mind, clean in action; to have an ideal and not to keep that ideal purely for the study to have an ideal which you will in good faith strive to live up to when you are out in life. If you have an ideal only good while you sit at home, an ideal that nobody can live up to in outside life, then I advise you strongly to take that ideal, examine it closely, and then cast it away. It is not a good one. The ideal that it is impossible for a man to strive after in practical life is not the type of ideal that you wish to hold up and follow. Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground. Be truthful; a lie implies fear, vanity or malevolence; and be frank; furtiveness and insincerity are faults incompatible with true manliness. Be honest, and remember that honesty counts for nothing unless back of it lie courage and efficiency. If in this country we ever have to face a state of things in which on one side stand the men of high ideals who are honest, good, well-meaning, pleasant people, utterly unable to put those ideals into shape in the rough field of practical life, while on the other side are grouped the strong, powerful, efficient men with no ideals: then the end of the Republic will be near. The salvation of the Republic depends the salvation of our whole social system depends upon the production year by year of a sufficient number of citizens who possess high ideals combined with the practical power to realize them in actual life.

Star

“A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

“I used to be so good at that kind of thing," Skulduggery said quietly.
"Well, my morale is certainly boosted," Valkyrie informed him.
"Really?"
"god no. That was terrible”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

God

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Love, World

“You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

Source: Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work

World, Reading

“Was that life? Well then, once more!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Life

“It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Context: (Answering "What made you step up to making your own record?") I felt like I may not get opportunities to do this ever again, so it’s about time—it’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There’s almost no such thing as ready. There’s only now. And you may as well do it now. I mean, I say that confidently as if I’m about to go bungee jumping or something—I’m not. I’m not a crazed risk taker. But I do think that, generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“Well, everybody does it that way, Huck."
"Tom, I am not everybody.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Way

“A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within. He may be known by his warfare as well as by his peace.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: Holiness

War, Peace

“Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Life, Pain, Joy

“He's probably their battle poet, too."
"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"
"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy…. When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Training

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“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.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, Men, World, Peace

“Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Life, Death, Sleep

“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.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

History

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

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)

Life, Secret

“God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

God

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Love, Housing, Madness

“Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

Life, Feeling, Soul, Nature

“I don't want to be a man," said Jace. "I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can't confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead."
"Well," said Luke, "you're doing a fantastic job.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

People

“The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Truth, Lie, History

“I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

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

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

God

“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!"

Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.”

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

Source: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Through The Looking Glass

“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Comment to James Longstreet, on seeing a Union charge repelled in the Battle of Fredericksburg (13 December 1862)
1860s

War

“Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love

“Well, we must wait for the future to show.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Waiting, Future

“Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar His face is to us.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Variant: Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us.

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods