Chris Wright > Chris's Quotes

“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Makin' mistakes ain't a crime, you know. What's the use of having a reputation if you can't ruin it every now and then?”
― Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry

“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
― Henry Ford

“Remember no one expects you to be Halt. He's a legend, after all. Haven't you heard? He's eight feet tall and kills bears with his bare hands...”
― John Flanagan, Erak's Ransom

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
― Thomas Paine

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.”
― Mark Twain

“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”
― Joseph Hall

“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”
― Henry Ford

“See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“[she] had a great reputation for unselfishness because she was always giving up a lot of things she didn't want.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“If a man ordered a beer milkshake he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

“It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“It is only the people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
― Tagore

“Even when in the deepest distress, the actor ultimately cannot cease to think of the impression he and the whole scenic effect is making, even for example at the burial of his own child; he will weep over his own distress and the ways in which it expresses itself, as his own audience. The hypocrite who always plays one and the same role finally ceases to be a hypocrite; for example priests, who as young men are usually conscious or unconscious hypocrites, finally become natural and then really are priests without any affectation; or if the father fails to get that far then perhaps the son does so, employing his father's start and inheriting his habits. If someone obstinately and for a long time wants to appear something it is int he end hard for him to be anything else. The profession of almost every man, even that of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation from without, with a copying of what is most effective. He who is always wearing a mask of a friendly countenance must finally acquire a power over benevolent moods without which the impression of friendliness cannot be obtained - and finally these acquire power over him, he is benevolent.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

“The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”
― Philip Larkin

“Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“The breath that sharpens life is life itself.”
― Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

“I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.”
― Philip Larkin

“Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems”
― Philip Larkin

“books are a load of crap”
― Philip Larkin

“He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.”
― H. H. Munro a

“A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.”
― H.H. Munro