Dean James Renphrey > Dean James's Quotes

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
― John Lennon

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“When I see you, the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you.”
― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.”
― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

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

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
― Confucius

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Poems are never finished - just abandoned”
― Paul Valery

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Andre Gide

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”
― Andre Gide

“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”
― Andre Gide

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Rise to the occassion which is life!”
― Virginia Euwer Wolff