One of the best temporary cures for pride and affection is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
We seem to want mass production, but we must remember that men are individuals not to be satisfactorily dealt with in masses, and the making of men is more important than the production of things.
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
As Love and I late harbour'd in one inn, With proverbs thus each other entertain; "In love there is no lack," thus I begin; "Fair words make fools," replieth he again; "Who spares to speak doth spare to speed," quoth I; "As well," saith he, "too forward as too slow"; "Fortune assists the boldest," I reply; "A hasty man," quote he, "ne'er wanted woe"; "Labour is light where love," quote I, "doth pay"; "Light burden's heavy, if far borne"; Quoth I, "The main lost, cast the by away"; "Y'have spun a fair thread," he replies in scorn. And having thus awhile each other thwarted Fools as we met, so fools again we parted.
To dream anything that you want to dream, that is the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself, to test your limits, that is the courage to succeed.
If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.
If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there's no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.
When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite...You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.
The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.
Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.
When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.
It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?
If you want work well done, select a busy man; the other kind has no time.
We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction.
The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.
I didn't say that I didn't say it. I said that I didn't say that I said it. I want to make that very clear.
The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make. â¢Vice President Dan Quayle Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another. â¢Ambrose Bierce You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writes in the world.