Duy Nguyen > Duy's Quotes

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.”
― Paul Theroux

“If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.”
― Anchee Min, Red Azalea: A Memoir

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”
― Christopher Paolini

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.”
― Bill Nye

“One day in the country
Is worth a month in town”
― Christina Rossetti

“Nothing on earth can make up for the loss of one who has loved you.”
― Selma Lagerlöf

“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”
― Margaret Mead

“Be glad. Be good. Be brave.”
― Eleanor Hodgman Porter

“Just breathing isn't living!”
― Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“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, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett

“We humans are more complicated than animals, and we love through the imagination.”
― George Moore

“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
― Johnny Cash

“I am a citizen of the world.”
― Sylvia Beach

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.”
― Allan Gurganus

“Please believe that one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative realities.”
― Adeline Yen Mah, Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

“Time goes, you say? Ah, no! Alas, Time stays, we go.”
― Henry Austin Dobson

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.”
― Witold Gombrowicz

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”
― Henry Adams

“Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.”
― Rob Reiner

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey