“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” ~ John Locke
Tag Archives: Quotes
International Community Of Readers
“More and more the writer is aware of an international community of readers for whom dense language use and frequent local references are a hindrance. This seems obvious. I don’t decry it or criticize it – it’s just a fact.” ~ Tim Parks, Novelist
Expression Of An Opinion
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if …
“Who are we to tell anyone what they can or can’t do?” ~John Locke
“Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.” ~John Dewey
John Dewey – Philosopher, 1859 – 1952
Children
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.” ~ John Locke, Philosopher, 1632 – 1704
Reading Books
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ~ Anna Quindlen
Yup I Do
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The Best Experiences
“With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.” ~ Tim Parks, Novelist
Life Quote
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My Philosophy
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Great Advice
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“When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics.” ~Frank Ocean
Human Emotions
“Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It’s what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you’re bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.” ~ Stephen King
War
“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” ~ Paul Valery, Poet, 1871 – 1945
World
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, Playwright 1849 – 1924
“I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.” ~Antonio Porchia
All Truth
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Our Stories
“Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.” ~ Maya Angelou
The Key To Life
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” …
Greed Is A Bottomless Pit
“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” ~ Erich Fromm
“Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.” ~ Jack Kerouac
“Stories only happen to those who are able to tell them.” ~Paul Auster
The Creative Center Of A Writer’s Life
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books— of course! But …
Knowing…Not Knowing
We have to cross the boundary between knowing and not knowing many times before we achieve understanding. ~David Hawkins
The Sound Of Water
Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of water drops in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear becomes a cavity sculpted in the interior of the mind. ~Steven Holl
“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.” ~Albert Camus
Never complain. Never Explain. ~Katharine Hepburn
The Greatest Achievement
“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.” ~ James Allen, Writer, 1864 – 1912
Being An Intellectual
“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.” – Janis Joplin”
“We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.” ~ Helen Hayes
America…
“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
“The most beautiful curve on a woman’s body is her smile.” ~Bob Marley
A Writer’s Life
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books— of course! But …
People Are Strange
“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.” ~ Charles Bukowsk, Poet, 1920 – 1994
The Mind Loves The Unknown
“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.” ~ Rene Magritte, Artist, 1898 – 1967
“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.” ~Francis Bacon
“Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.” ~ Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot, Philosopher, 1713 – 1784
Independent Thinkers
“A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.” ~ John Dewey, Philosopher, 1859 – 1952
Life Is Too Short
“I don’t care what people think about me. Never did, never will. Life is too short to be worrying about that shit.” ~ Amy Winehouse, Singer-songwriter, Born: September 14, 1983 – Died: July 23, 2011
Noble And Beautiful
“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.” ~ John Lennon
Wake Up, America
“Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs …
Dreaming
“Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.” ~ Petrarch, Poet, 1304 – 1374
Helping Others
“It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” ~ Honore de Balzac
“Singing, it’s like it’s like loving somebody, it’s a supreme emotional and physical experience.” ~ Janis Joplin
Voting
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” ~W. H. Auden
Morning Quote
“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” ~ William James
Nothing Is Absolute
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” ~ Frida Kahlo, Painter, Born: July 6, 1907 – Died: July 13, 1954
Morning Quote
“My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don’t pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.” ~ Vivien Leigh
A Good Novel
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” ~ Jane Austen
A Higher Revelation
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soils in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents. Ludwig van Beethoven
Direction
A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going in the opposite direction in this too-big world. ~ Jack Kerouac
Details are the Life of Prose. ~Jack Kerouac
The Queens English
You know, I do speak the Queens English. It’s just the wrong Queens that’s all. It’s over the 59th Street Bridge. It’s not over the Atlantic Ocean. ~ Cyndi Lauper
The Shadowy Tip Of Reality
“This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you’re on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable…Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . . Next stop The …
The Key Of Imagination
“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.” ~ Rod Serling The Twilight Zone (television …
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” ~ George Orwell
Summer
My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever. ~ George R. R. Martin
“We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves” ~ Jim Morrison
Honesty
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most.” ~Abraham Lincoln
To Much
“I used to say, ‘Things cost too much.’ Then my teacher straightened me out on that by saying, ‘The problem isn’t that things cost too much. The problem is that you can’t afford it.’ That’s when I finally understood that the problem wasn’t ‘it’-the problem was ‘me.’” ~ Jim Rohn
Traveling
“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.” ~ Lisa St. Aubin de Terán
Poor People
There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” ~ Carl Jung
“Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.” ~Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell, Actress, 1907-1976
Being Useless
“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.” ~ Sylvia Plath
Success
“The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.” ~ John Madden, A former coach of the Oakland Raiders
“Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.” ~John Madden
“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.” ~John Burroughs
“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.” ~John Burroughs
John Burroughs, Essayist, 1837-1921
Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us. ~Paul Theroux
Night Time
Night time is really the best time to work. All there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. ~Catherine Ohara
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” ~Martin Heidegger
“Nothing is everything that doesn’t happen at this very moment.” ~Martin Heidegger
Pleasure Of Reading
Story Writers
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. Edgar Allan Poe
The Wise Man
“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” ~ Claude Levi-Strauss
Coffee And Tea
“If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.” ~ William E. Gladstone, Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, United Kingdom
Self-Expression
“To me, clothing is a form of self-expression – there are hints about who you are in what you wear.” ~ Marc Jacobs, Fashion designer
Pursuit Of Money
“In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.” ~ John Rawls, Philosopher, 1921 – 2002
The Most Beautiful Things
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. ~John Steinbeck
Beautiful insane in the rain. ~Jack Kerouac
Some walks you have to take alone. ~Suzanne Collins
“Lawyers sometimes tell the truth. They’ll do anything to win a case.” ~Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham, Philosopher, 1748 – 1832
Writing Is …
Reading List
“There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.” ~David Hume
Bricks
“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.” ~ Gilles Deleuze, Philosopher, 1925 – 1995
“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.” ~Baruch Spinoza
Two Ways To Be Fooled
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
Words
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. ~ Blaise Pascal
The Poor
The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
The secret of theory is that truth does not exist. ~Jean Baudrillard
More And More Information
We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning. ~ Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher, Born: June 27, 1929 – Died: March 6, 2007
Dream Beings
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~Jack Kerouac
“If you can’t do anything about it, laugh like hell.” ~David Cook
David Cook, Singer-songwriter
A Pondering Mind 
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