John 's quotes

(showing 1-43 of 43)

"Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens the Devils to contest his vision."
— Norman Mailer

4 people liked it

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

tags: education
97 people liked it

"Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

9 people liked it

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
— Socrates

tags: knowledge, wisdom
979 people liked it

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: books, soul
11,374 people liked it

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation
7,766 people liked it

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."
— Mark Twain

tags: bookroom, books, wisdom
1,391 people liked it

"Never laugh at live dragons"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: dragons, wisdom
376 people liked it

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: identity, opinions
1,101 people liked it

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories)

tags: sin
725 people liked it

"this is your life, and it's ending one moment at a time."
— tyler durden

tags: club, fight
3 people liked it

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

tags: lies, lying, memory, truth
9,622 people liked it

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
— Aldous Huxley

tags: fact, ignorance, truth
1,215 people liked it

"I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"
— John Lennon

tags: beatles, dragons, dreamers, dreaming, dreams, fairies, faith, mythology, nightmares, reality, truth
423 people liked it

"As I looked back over my life, I realized that I enjoyed nothing--not art, not sex--more than going to the movies. "
— Gore Vidal

5 people liked it

"The unfed mind devours itself."
— Gore Vidal

14 people liked it

"No good deed goes unpunished"
— Gore Vidal

5 people liked it

"How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself."
— Gore Vidal (Julian: A Novel)

3 people liked it

"The writer can grow as a person or he can shrink. ... His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish. The fatal thing is to shrink, to be interested in less, sympathetic to less, desiccating to the point where life itself loses its flavor, and one’s passion for human understanding changes to weariness and distaste."
— Norman Mailer

tags: writers, writing
5 people liked it

"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing"
— Norman Mailer

2 people liked it

"To condense fact from the vapor of nuance."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

8 people liked it

"He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly."
— Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)

4 people liked it

"Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

tags: atheism, christianity, church, intelligence
3 people liked it

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

tags: humor
118 people liked it

"She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave"
— Neal Stephenson

4 people liked it

"Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking."
— Malcolm Gladwell

tags: decisions
12 people liked it

"Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying."
— Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)

tags: inspirational
10 people liked it

"When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy. "
— Dave Barry (Dave Barry Turns 50)

tags: humor
130 people liked it

"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person."
— Dave Barry

52 people liked it

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."
— Dave Barry

37 people liked it

"Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!"
— Dave Barry

tags: columnist, writing
12 people liked it

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
— Robert F. Kennedy

tags: achievement, challenge, failure, success, trying
65 people liked it

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."
— Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

tags: books
50 people liked it

"Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division"
— R.A. Salvatore

23 people liked it

"Everyone dies. It is how one lives that matters."
— Artemis Entreri (R.A. Salvatore)

tags: death, living
8 people liked it

"A king is a man strong of character and conviction who leads by example and truly cares for the suffering of his people,not a brute who rules simply because he is the strongest."
— R.A. Salvatore

6 people liked it

"We are all dying, every moment that passes of every day. That is the inescapable truth of this existence. It is a truth that can paralyze us with fear, or one that can energize us with impatience, with the desire to explore and experience, with the hope- nay, the iron-will!- to find a memory in every action. To be alive, under sunshine, or starlight, in weather fair or stormy. To dance with every step, be they through gardens of flowers or through deep snows."
— R.A. Salvatore

7 people liked it

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

tags: advertising, apple, change, commercial, computers, different, madness, misfits, nonconformity, progressive, quo, rebels, status, think, troublemakers
7,176 people liked it

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: fantasy, tolkien
52 people liked it

""From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken: The crownless again shall be king.""
— J.R.R. Tolkien

24 people liked it

"A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended."
— Ian McEwan (Atonement)

112 people liked it

"When its gone, you'll know what a gift love was. you'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it."
— Ian McEwan (Enduring Love)

tags: lost-love, love
29 people liked it

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

tags: temptation
30 people liked it

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