Steven Malone > Steven's Quotes

“You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”
― Don Marquis

“Merciful Father.... I have squandered my days with plans of many things.
This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only, to live the next few minutes well.
For all we ought to have thought and have not thought... All we ought to have said and have not said. All we ought to have done and have not done. I pray thee, God for forgiveness.”
― Ahmed Ibn Fadlan

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The traveller: or, a prospect of society. A poem, inscribed to the Rev. Mr. Henry Goldsmith. By Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. The fifth edition.

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”
― Mark Twain

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
― Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

“We may convince others by our arguements, but we can only persuade them by their own”
― Joseph Joubert

“a conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that 'ancient institution,' the old one”
― Douglas Jerrold

“theology is to religion what poisons are to food”
― Voltaire

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”
― Mark Twain

“Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against disbelief”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
― Doris Lessing

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”
― Lin Yutang

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.”
― Lin Yutang

“The wise man reads both books and life itself.”
― Lin Yutang

“Self publishing' is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed!”
― Phil Simpkin

“If I knew I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.”
― Mickey Mantle

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.”
― John Cleese

“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life.”
― James Branch Cabell

“Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us. ”
― Lionel Trilling

“Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
― Aesop