Ron > Ron's Quotes

“We turn not older with years but newer every day.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Who wills, Can.
Who tries, Does.
Who loves, Lives.”
― Anne McCaffrey

“A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.”
― Anne McCaffrey

“We have servants and machines in order that our will may be carried out beyond the reach of our own arms. Machines are more powerful than servants and more obedient and less rebellious, but machines have no judgment and will not remonstrate with us when our will is foolish, and will not disobey us when our will is evil. In times and places where people despise the gods, those most in need of servants have machines, or choose servants who will behave like machines. I believe this will continue”
― Anonymous

“My greatest teacher once told me,” said Yasujiro, “that a man who has risked his life knows that careers are worthless, and a man who will not risk his career has a worthless life.”
― Anonymous

“Marriage used to be a legal term. It denoted a partnership and property and protection from the Visigoths beyond the village walls. This was apparently not good enough for us, the modern married. We wanted it to be something else. We wanted to invest it with all of our hopes and all of our conceptions of passion and romance. And now that is what we have. A freighted, overburdened, gorgeous institution that is the devil and all to get right.”
― Wendy Plump, Vow: A Memoir of Marriage

“In this, they echoed the views of a generation brought up to think of Britain as Great, but now doomed in peacetime to watch the American ascendancy, decolonisation, queues, bureaucracy, socialism and other perceived indignities as the Empire declined.”
― Ben Macintyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond

“So when war can’t be avoided, you fight in such a way as to reveal to the enemy how war is destroying him. When he finally sees it, he stops.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadows in Flight

“It’s called “the five to one rule.” In bad relationships, in fact in reliably doomed relationships, there are always two or more insults for every six interactions the couples have.”
― Lauren Slater, Playing House: Notes of a Reluctant Mother

“George Washington was the first and greatest such example, a man called to power not only because of his views but also for his reassuring bearing. He was a man with whom the people felt comfortable. Jackson’s political appeal came out of the same tradition—a tradition in which a leader creates a covenant of mutual confidence between himself and the broader public.”
― Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

“He loved Dottie, but he and Dottie always got along best by e-mail. E-mail was how he had first asked her out. E-mail was how they carried out their professional lives and coordinated their schedules. They often sent each other e-mail over the breakfast table when they were living inside the same house. They’d decided to have a child by e-mail. They’d been talking over e-mail about having another one.”
― Bruce Sterling, The Zenith Angle: A Novel

“There was something inhuman about being dutiful workaholics, something that wrecked marriages, shattered families, and made a man and woman shrivel up inside. It was going to kill them both someday. Without his wife and his child, hinges had popped loose in Van’s soul. He could feel that something quiet but vital to his humanity was slowly going down the shredder.”
― Bruce Sterling, The Zenith Angle: A Novel

“To run the world, you had to find it in yourself to grit your teeth and just fake it. Just stare them down, never back off.”
― Bruce Sterling, The Zenith Angle: A Novel

“Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“As J. S. Mill wrote, “No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“He’s telling you this because he loves you like a brother, because he doesn’t want you to come back in the morning or next month or next year with that same chunk of your soul missing for life, the chunk that separates you from all the bodies out in the street that ain’t got nothing to lose, no focus other than satisfying their silly little desires, no belief in anything other than money, pussy, and revenge.”
― D, Got

“Humiliation stimulates effort,”
― Tim Clissold, Chinese Rules: Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China – A Business Memoir and Practical Guide to Winning in the Modern East

“Mi was the typical Chinese entrepreneur, dodging, botching, ducking, and weaving, muddling his way round rules and obstacles with resolute cheerfulness.”
― Tim Clissold, Chinese Rules: Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China – A Business Memoir and Practical Guide to Winning in the Modern East

“La Closerie, in Ansouis.”
― Peter Mayle, Provence in Ten Easy Lessons

“Cavaillon—which, as any Provençal will tell you, is the “melon capital of the world”—with”
― Peter Mayle, Provence in Ten Easy Lessons

“When you put something alive in your mouth,” he said, “it makes you more alive. The people who produce wine are mostly pedantic and stupid,” he continued, jabbing the air with his glass, sloshing the dregs. “They don’t make wine; wine makes itself, God makes wine.”
― Michael Paterniti, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese

“Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.”
― Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

“I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. The wisdom of discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what looks great and strong.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. ”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“We must not focus on occupying the spaces where power is exercised, but rather on starting long-run historical processes. We must initiate processes rather than occupy spaces.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“May the man hold fast to what the child has promised.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis

“Tell me, when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” If we dare to really see people, in their dignity and humanity, then we shall discover the right words to say.”
― Pope Francis, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis