Quotes
To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great.
—Zane Grey, author (31 Jan 1872-1939)
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
—George Orwell
If you don’t get what you want, it’s a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.
—Rudyard Kipling
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it.
—Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, philosopher and author (1879 -1955)
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
—J.D. Salinger
豊かな感情を楽しみ、複雑な感情と格闘しないのならば、そういう人は動物に 戻ってしまえばいい。
“If we yearn to live affluent lives without complexity or fighting, we should return to being animals.”
—(reference lost)
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man.
—Benjamin Franklin
A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
—Jorge Luis Borges, writer (24 Aug 1899-1986)
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
—Terry Pratchett, novelist (28 Apr 1948-2015)
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
—Arnold Glasgow
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
—James Baldwin
The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
—Vincent van Gogh, painter (30 Mar 1853-1890)
The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
—John Galsworthy, author, Nobel laureate (14 Aug 1867-1933)
Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.
–—N. R. Narayana Murthy
Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will, through work, bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea’.
—Chuck Close
Through others, we become ourselves.
—Lev Vygotsky, psychologist (17 Nov 1896-1934)
Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.
—Brenda Ueland, journalist, editor, and writer (24 Oct 1891-1985)
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
-James Joyce, novelist and poet (2 Feb 1882-1941)
I don’t like to gamble, but if there is one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.
—Beyoncé
A man got to have a code.
—Omar Little
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
—Thomas Alva Edison
The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic – in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea – known to medical science is work.
—Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (15 Apr 1920-2012)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence. Hovering there I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air. “Up, up the long delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, where never lark, or even eagle, flew; and, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.
—John Gillespie Magee, Spitfire pilot killed during WWII
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
—Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life.
—Sophia Loren, actress (b. 1934)
Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.
—Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (6 Apr 1741-1794)
Reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.
—Karin Slaughter, novelist (b. 6 Jan 1971)
When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before.
-Clifton Fadiman, editor and critic (15 May 1904-1999)