John Burroughs > John's Quotes

“I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I need it.”
― John Cage

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.”
― John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature

“The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.”
― Kenneth Patchen

“There's more to life than books, you know. But not much more.”
― Morrissey

“I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work,' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.”
― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
― Andy Warhol

“I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens”
― Andy Warhol

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
― Andy Warhol

“If everyone isn't beautiful, then no one is.”
― Andy Warhol

“I can never get over when you're on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great. I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.”
― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé

“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”
― Stephen Mallarme

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other. Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time that someone else. Hours in which honesty is permitted have become rare, and when they arrive one is tired and does not only want to "let oneself go" but actually wishes to stretch out as long and wide and ungainly as one happens to be... Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

“There are so many little dyings
How do we know which one of them
is death?


”
― Kenneth Patchen

“You have to be odd to be number one”
― Dr. Seuss

“But I was too young to know how to love her.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”
― John Cage

“As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.”
― John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings

“Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.”
― John Cage

“Every something is an echo of nothing”
― John Cage

“In the dark, all cats are black.”
― John Cage

“All great art is a form of complaint”
― John Cage

“A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.”
― John Cage

“Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.”
― John Cage

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”
― John Cage

“Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.”
― John Cage

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”
― John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
― John Cage