Chuck Stewart > Chuck's Quotes

“Everything on our earth—both the simple and the complicated questions, both the little human problems and the challenges of finding the great path to God, all the secrets of the past, the present, and the future ages—all can be resolved only by such mysterious, ineffably beautiful and omnipotent humility. And even if we cannot understand its truth and meaning, and even if it seems for now that we are not ready for this mysterious and all-powerful humility, nonetheless, that humility by itself will reveal itself to us through those incredible persons who are capable of possessing it.”
― Tikhon Shevkunov, Everyday Saints and Other Stories

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“As I approached the field, I called the tower, identified myself, and said I would like to land and pay my respects to General Patton if that was agreeable and convenient. I was cleared to land. When I parked, there was Georgie in his famous Jeep with the three-star flags flying, his helmet reflecting the sun gloriously and his ivory-handled revolvers at his side. He rushed forward, threw his arms around me, and with great tears streaming down his face, said, "Jimmy, I'm glad to see you. I didn't think anyone would ever call on a mean old son of a bitch like me.”
― James H. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again

“The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.”
― Jimmy Doolittle

“There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.”
― Jimmy Doolittle

“A really good writer is hard to find and can be expensive. A bad writer is easy to find and can be really, really expensive!”
― Patrick P. Stafford

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
― Albert Einstein

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“If you never quit, you're never beaten.”
― Elsan H. Stafford

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained!!!”
― Ben Franklin

“Oh, to survive
thirty-seven years on just a particle of dew!
To need exactly nothing. To sprout
weapons from your own fibrous flesh.
To bloody those
who hover in to feed you.

From, "Nature Conservancy, Spring”
― Kristen McHenry, Paper Covers Rock and Triplicity: Poems in Threes

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.”
― Henry James

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

“Gossip is never fatal until it is denied.”
― Booth Tarkington

“Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“Ciabattari is a master of transformation as she gives these stories of loss, woe, crisis and collapse the salutary and sometimes bracing pleasures of plain good fiction."--Kirkus Reviews”
― Jane Ciabattari, Stealing the Fire: Stories

“Tell your secrets to the wind, the trees will soon know them. -- Oscar Wilde”
― Ofir Engel, Poetry of the Brilliant Silence: Deluxe Edition

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.”
― James Dickey