The following is a compendium of famous and un-famous quotes provided for inspiration, enjoyment, pondering…and for my own quick reference so I can quote them correctly.
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too…Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” -Goethe
“Every man is said to have his particular ambition. I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.” -Abraham Lincoln, in announcing he was running for State Legislature from Sangamon Country, March 1832.
“To whom much was given, of him much will be required; and from whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” – Luke 12:48
“We all fear death and question our place in the universe; the artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. Now you have a clear and lively voice, don’t be such a defeatist.” – Midnight in Paris
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” -Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” – Buddha (apocryphally)
“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ATTRIBUTION: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5, l. 164-7.
“A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision with a task is the hope of the world.” – From a church in Sussex, England ca. 1730
“The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon.” -Warren Bennis
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“You’re never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” -CS Lewis
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking…” -Scarecrow, Wizard of Oz
“Everyone has a past, not everyone has a history.” -Eric Carswell
“Aut Liberi, aut Libri” -Friedrich Nietzsche, making the word play “either children or books” in reference to that which survives; our legacy through written works or through progeny.
“A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.” -Alfred E. Wiggam
“But one thing was quite clear…“ He wrote. “[B]eing broke didn’t disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than ever: I had a wonderful time.“ – Sol Bloom, per Devil in the White City
“Whenever something goes wrong, it always comes back to process. Either there is no process, the process wasn’t known by someone, the process was known but wasn’t followed, or the process needs to be changed.” – Apparently a maxim at Danaher Corporation
“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves — to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.” – Stewart B. Johnson
“It’s not peer pressure, it’s just your turn.” -apparently common phrase in the circus, but first heard from Mike Emerick
“Nothing is black and white, not even the colors themselves. ” -Seann Verde
“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” -Mis-attributed to the Buddha, actually a mis-translation of the the Dhammapada; better translated as “Don’t sacrifice your own welfare for that of another, no matter how great. Realizing your own true welfare, be intent on just that.”
“This is America; pick a job and then become the person that does it.” -Bobbie Barrett, Mad Men
“How can such as he be the world’s master, when he has not yet seated himself on a throne of inner universal Dominion?” -A Yogi speaking of Alexander the Great, from Autobiography of a Yogi
“If God actually listened to me, everything would be damned.” -Seann Verde
An assortment from Jeffrey Lewis, musician and comic book writer:
“I’ve got too much confidence to only do things that make sense.”
“Yeah I gotta take it day by day; but the lucky part is it comes that way.”
“I wasn’t designed to move so fast; I wasn’t designed to have so much past.”
“Our current culture encourages us to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.” -Tim Jackson, TED Speaker
“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.” -Mark Twain
“Come on, we’ve failed before.” -Peggy Olson, Mad Men
“When the load gets tough, the tough get loaded.” -Bucky Carter
“You’re the only shadow standing in your own sunshine.” -Fabio, Top Chef
“It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest people. When you see 20 or 30 men line up for a distance race in some meet, don’t pity them, don’t feel sorry for them. Better envy them instead.” -Brutus Hamilton
“Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility and commitment.” -H. Ross Perot
“Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.” -Lin Yutang
“A sense of thrift is essential to success in business. The businessman must discipline himself to practice economy whenever possible, in his personal life as well as his business affairs.” -J. Paul Getty
“I just want to be dumb and happy; live life like an American.”
-Mike Kasmer (paraphrasing Eddie Vedder)
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Fatalism is the lazy man’s way of accepting the evitable.” -Natalie Clifford Barney
“Never give the apprentice a nail gun…he’ll just make more mistakes faster.” -Chris Kasmer
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” -Albert Camus
“One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” -Jean de La Fontaine, Fables (and Oogway in Kung Fu Panda)
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.” Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
“Tis true my form is something odd, But blaming me is blaming God; Could I create myself anew I would not fail in pleasing you. If I could reach from pole to pole Or grasp the ocean with a span, I would be measured by the soul; The mind’s the standard of the man.” –Joseph Merrick, AKA “The Elephant Man”
“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.” – Albert Camus
“Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow; don’t walk behind me, I may not lead; walk beside me, and just be my friend.” -Anonymous, but attributed to Albert Camus
“If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” -Albert Camus
In response to the question, “So what does he do for Sun Technologies?” “Something to do with analyzing synergies or synergizing analogies” -Joe Son
“Sabotage…but that’s the thing I do to me.” -Antonia (?), Top Chef
“Looking good, Billy Ray. Feeling good, Lewis.” -Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, Trading Places
“The dynasties of ancient Egypt did not run the place like an empire but an integrated state, which is markedly different – as we saw, it produces different types of variations. Nation states rely on centralized bureaucracy, whereas empires, such as the Roman empire and ottoman dynasties, have relied on local elites, in fact allowing the city states to prosper and conserve some effective autonomy – and, what was great for peace, such autonomy was commercial, not military. In reality the Ottomans did these vessels and suzerains a favor by preventing them from involvement in warfare – this took away militaristic Temptations and helped them Thrive; regardless of how iniquitous the system seems to be on the surface, it allowed locals to focus on commerce rather than war. It protected them from themselves.…” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, (p. 96, Antifragile)
“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” – Lily Tomlin
On Love
(An excerpt from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, emphasis added by me)
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love. And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he`s for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant: And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God`s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life`s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love`s peace and love`s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love`s threshing floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself, Love possesses not nor would it be possessed: For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.” And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has not other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly andjoyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving: To rest at the noon hour and meditate love`s ecstasy; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in you heart and a song of praise upon you lips.