Quix' quotes
The following are the first part of my collection of quotations. They come from a variety of sources, and are in no particular order. I make no apology for any themes that dominate the collection. Such themes are no doubt there, and perhaps to some extent reflect parts of my indentity. Most of the quotes came from other collections on the internet. In particular, Cole's Quotables, Inspiration Point, Quintessential Quotations and the Quotations Home Page were important sources. A rather comprehensive list of quotation sites can be found on Yahoo.
But wait, there's more, quite literally. I have just added some more quotes.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams
of being an honest coward like everybody else.
--Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyper Reality,
1986.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is
worth living, and your belief will help you create the
fact.
--William James, The Will to Believe, 1897.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series:
Self-Reliance.
To live is like to love--all reason against it, and
all healthy instinct for it.
--Samuel Butler, Note Books.
What is your religion? I mean--not what you know
about religion but the belief that helps you most?
--George Eliot.
This above all: to thine own self be true
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet,(Act I, scene
iii).
The turning point in the process of growing up is when
you discover the core of strength within you that
survives all hurt.
--Max Lerner, The Unfinished Country, 1950.
The great artists are those who impose their peculiar
vision on the rest of mankind.
--Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean, 1888.
There's only one corner of the universe you can be
certain of improving and that's your own self.
--Aldous Huxley.
Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to
make sense of, and the meaning of it is nothing other
than the sense you choose.
--Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a
Humanism.
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who
does not ask remains a fool forever.
--Chinese proverb.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired
by age eighteen.
--Albert Einstein.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the
self is more distant than any star.
--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.
In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.
--Ovid, The Art of Love, circa 8 C.E.
The scientist is not a person who gives the right
answers, he's one who asks the right questions.
--Claude Levi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit,
1964.
I say "me" knowing all the while it's not
me.
--Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, 1953.
Always do what you are afraid to do.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson.
There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.
--Edna St. Vincent Milay, Conversation at
Midnight.
To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test
of maturity.
--Edward Weeks, in Look, 1961.
What is now proven was once only imagined.
--William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what
we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid
of what will be found out about us. But every time we
tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
--Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life,
1860.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from
insufficient premises.
--Samuel Butler, Note Books.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use.
--Galileo Galilei
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious
basis is necessary.
Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be
restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after
death.
--Albert Einstein
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads
us from this world to another.
--Plato, The Republic. Book VII. 529
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't
have the balls to live in the real world.
--Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid
paradise.
--Victor Hugo, Ninety-three, 1874.
Is life worth living? That is a question for an
embryo, not a man.
--Samuel Butler, Note Books.
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
--William Blake, Proverbs of Hell.
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
--Samuel Butler, Note Books.
Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit.
--Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Ch. 16.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does
not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
--Albert Einstein
Do what you will, this life's a fiction,
And is made up of contradiction.
--William Blake, Gnomic Verses, No. 23.
I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.
--William Shakespeare, Richard III, V.iv.9-10.
With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality.
--Hannah Arendt, speech 5 December 1977.
Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, Bk. vii, ch. ix.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
--Albert Einstein, In an interview on "Belgenland," December 1930.
Everything may happen.
(Omnio fieri possent.)
--Seneca, Epistuloe ad Lucilium, Epis. lxx, 9.
History is philosophy teaching by example.
--Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Arte Rhetorica.
Death is nothing to us: for that which is dissolved is without sensation;
and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.
--Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, II.
All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.
--Alexandre Dumas (the Elder), The Count of Monte Cristo.
All great ideas are dangerous.
--Oscar Wilde, De Profundis.
Man is the only animal for whom his existence is a problem which he has to solve.
--Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 1947.
Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. It is faith that begets heresies.
There are no heresies in a dead religion.
--Andre Suares, Peguy.
Life is half spent before we know what it is.
--George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651.
The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.
--Andre Gide, Journals, 4 Aug 1930.
What is it that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket and wait for
someone to light the fuse?
--Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
I desire to have both heaven and hell ever in my eye, while I stand on this
isthmus of life, between two boundless oceans.
--John Wesley, in a letter, 1747.
The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death.
--Plato
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley