Michael > Michael's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
― Maya Angelou

“Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.”
― John Donne, The Poems of John Donne (Volume 1); Miscellaneous Poems (Songs and Sonnets) Elegies. Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs. Satires. Epigrams. the Progress of the Soul. Notes

“For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“But time brought healing,
Downsizing of ego,
And freedom from bondage.
Alas, neither damnation
Nor salvation
Would come—
No terror of some hellish fiend
Or apocalyptic fury
Upon his command.
There was nothing to fear,
And there was everything.”
― Kyrian Lyndon, Remnants of Severed Chains