Professional Writer Quotes

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.

The point is seeing that THIS - the immediate, everyday and present experience - is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.

Sometimes you will never know the value of something,until it becomes a memory.

Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into kings and subjects. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.

You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast-but for luncheon-for dinner- for tea-for supper-for between meals.

What should be shrunken must first be stretched.

We must recognise that we have a great inheritance in our possession, which represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

But old fools is the biggest fools there is.

What people need and what they want may be very different.

The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted.

I will take the Ring", he said, "though I do not know the way.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And is anxious in its sleep. . . .

Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui In the green fields of Lebennin! Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea The white lilies sway, And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin In the green fields of Lebennin, In the wind from the Sea!

All the heavenly Bodies, the Stars and Planets, are regulated with the utmost Wisdom! And can we suppose less Care to be taken in the Order of the moral than in the natural System?

Friends are the true Sceptres of Princes.

The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century.

You are very harsh.' 'I have seen the world.

Tart, cathartic virtue.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.

Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.

There is a point, of course, where a man must take the isolated peak and break with all his associates for clear principle; but until that time comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let him work with them for the best that can be obtained.

He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without.

The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.

When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

The voice in your head also creates a huge amount of problems that aren't really problems. They're just things that haven't happened yet, things that could happen tomorrow or next week. Listening to unreal problems has another name: worrying. That's what the voice in your head does. It what-ifs. It frets. It agonizes, and you can no longer sense the joy of life.

If you wou'd have Guests merry with your cheer, Be so your self, or so at least appear.

Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Let no one be ashamed to say yes today if yesterday he said no. Or to say no today if yesterday he said yes. For that is life. Never to have changed-what a pitiable thing of which to boast!

Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.

My house says to me, "do not leave me, for here dwells your past." And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future." And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death change all things."

The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now

A good person, striving dimly,Is well aware of the right path.

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.

And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?

Responsibiliti es gravitate to the man who can shoulder them and the power to him who knows how

What torments of grief you endured, from evils that never arrived

Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.