Michael > Michael's Quotes

“If God does not exist everything is permitted.”
― Fydor Dostoevsky

“I see you’re in a hurry to get someplace. It’s a great mistake to hurry.” “Why?” Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said. “Because the grave’s our destination,” Mr. Sedgwick said. “Those who hurry usually get to it quicker than those who take their time.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The difference between genius and stupidity is: genius has its limits.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Athos liked every one to exercise his own free-will. He never gave his advice before it was demanded and even then it must be demanded twice.
"In general, people only ask for advice," he said "that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it".”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

“I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice. . . You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day--that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“There a few forces in politics harder to resist than a feeling that something is inevitable, for humans move as a flock, and will always rush like sheep toward the safety of a winner.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Few subjects make more tedious reading than happiness.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Since when has idiocy been a bar to advancement in politics?”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“There was no degree of competence that would assure anyone of survival, and no scale that would tell a commander which man would live and which man would die.”
― Larry McMurtry, Streets Of Laredo

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“He shook his head. You're asking that I make myself vulnerable and that I can never do. I have only one way to live. It doesn't allow for special cases. A coin toss perhaps. In this case to small purpose. Most people don't believe that there can be such a person. You see what a problem that must be for them. How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That there could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?

Yes, she said sobbing. I do. I truly do.

Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“...you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It's just a aggravation.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. And that is something I don't want to be wrong about.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“We're all blessed and we're all blighted, Chief Inspector," said Finney. "Everyday each of us does our sums. The question is, what do we count?”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Be careful. You're making hurting a habit. Spreading it around won't lessen your pain, you know. Just the opposite.”
― Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like.”
― Will Rogers