Quotes

these are not in any particular order: enjoy the random sponaneity.

"Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs of his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
-Gustave Flaubert

"What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music."
-Soren Kierkegaard

"For time is the longest distance between two places."
-Tennessee Williams

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
-George Carlin

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
-Shakespeare, Macbeth

"Calvin: Look, a dead bird!
Hobbes: It must have hit a window.
Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate.
sighhhh ... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your affairs, you can't really think about that....Which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly.
It's very confusing.
I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up.
Hobbes: No doubt."
-Bill Watterson Calvin & Hobbes

"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written."
-Jean Jacques Rosseau

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-Albert Einstein

"There is no sense in crying over spilt milk."
-Sophocles

"It is discouraging to try and penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it."
-Mark Twain

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
-John Lubbock

"Four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected opportunity."
-Omar Ibn Al-Halif

"A person is most lonely when he has dropped something of his outer shell or facade-the face with which he has been meeting the world and feels sure that no one can understand, accept, or care for the part of his inner self that lies revealed"
-H. Kirschenbaum

"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate."
-Germaine Greer

"What makes loneliness an anguish
Is not that I have no one to share my burden,
But this:
I have only my own burden to bear."
-Dag Hammarskjold

"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
-Proverbs 11:29

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many...None of us seems to know who he is or where he's going."
-Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"...the strange thing is that man who is conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice already loaded against him will not face that final main which he knows before hand he has assuredly to face without essaying expedients ranging all the way from violence to petty chicanery that would not deceive a child until some day in very disgust he risks everything on a single blind turn of a card...he does it only when he has realised that even the despair or remorse or bereavement is not particularly important to the dark diceman..."
-William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (p177)

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest."
-Ecclesiastes 9:10

"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
-English Professor, Ohio University

"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk."
-Steven King, 3/8/90

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock."

"There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We do not believe this to be a coincidence."

"I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
-Audre Lorde

"And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."
-Naomi Wolf

"To laugh often & much; win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"
-Emily Dickinson

"These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed."
-Walter Benjamin

"...lovely Denver bars where the waitresses wear slacks and cut around with bashful, loving eyes, not hardened waitresses but waitresses that fall in love with the clientele and have explosive love affairs and huff and sweat and suffer from one bar to another"
-Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

"...no matter where I live, my trunk's always sticking out from under the bed, I'm ready to leave or get thrown out."
-Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

"Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum."
-Kurt Vonnegut

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
-Mark Twain

"Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic."
-Dan Rather

"There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough."
-Mark Twain

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
-George Orwell, Animal Farm

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure."
- Agent Smith, The Matrix

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today"
-James Dean