Qing Wang > Qing's Quotes

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

“It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
― Isaiah Berlin

“Post-national, welfare-state, cooperative, pacific Europe was not born of the optimistic, ambitious, forward-looking project imagined in fond retrospect by today's Euro-idealists. It was the insecure child of anxiety.”
― Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

“When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“How slow life is, how violent hope is.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”
― Wallace Stevens

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.”
― Paula Poundstone

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
― Zig Ziglar

“ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?
ESTRAGON: You let me go.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Chapter One of My Life. I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It still takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place! But it isn't my fault. And it still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit! My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter Four. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter Five. I walk down a different street.”
― Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”
― Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“But he was not beyond it, he knew, and would never be. Beneath the numbness, the indifference, the removal, it was there, intense and steady; it had always been there. ...... It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehend them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look! I am alive.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Begone, begone, you bloody whoreson Gauls!”
― John Williams, Stoner

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.”
― Carol Shields

“In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it.”
― Henry Kissinger

“If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either”
― James M. Cain

“For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.”
― Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Great Conversation: The Substance Of A Liberal Education

“Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

“Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For my love I’ll sacrifice
My life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice
My love.”
― Sandor Petofi

“Orchards and vineyards, And full-breasted houris, And a cup overflowing before me. Why do I babble of battles, And mountains reduced to dust? Why do I feel these tears? Heavens stand open And scatter their riches; My hands need but gather their wealth. Why do I think of an ambush, And poison in molten cup? Why do I feel my years? Love’s arms beckon With their naked delights, And Eden’s promise of ecstasies. Why do I remember the scars, Dream of old transgressions ... And why do I sleep with fears?”
― Anonymous