quotes

Children have more need of models than of critics.

- Joseph Joubert

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains

- Cady, Emilie

Where gold speaks every tongue is silent.

- Proverb, Italian

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

- Thomas Paine

What better can the Lord do for a man, than take him home when he has done his work?
"But, Master Yeo, a sudden death?"
"And why not a sudden death, Sir John? Even fools long for a short life and a merry one, and shall not the Lord's people pray for a short death and a merry one? Let it come as it will to old Yeo!"

- Westward Ho! chap. xxxii. 1855.

I don't psyche myself up. I psyche myself down. I think clearer when I'm not psyched up.

- Cauthen, Steve

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him from having 1. the sense of romantic solitude (if he is worth anything he will develop a proper and useful solitude) which identification with the hero gives. 2. cant ideas of right and wrong, absurd systems of honor and morality which never will he be able completely to get rid of, 3. the attainment of ideals, of a priori desires, of a priori emotions. He should amuse himself with fact only: he will then not learn that if the weak younger son do or do not the magical honorable thing he will win the princess with hair like flax.

- Trilling, Lionel

The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.

- Pritchett, V. S.

Peak performers develop powerful mental images of the behavior that will lead to the desired results. They see in their mind's eye the result they want, and the actions leading to it.

- Garfield, Charles A.

10.

Ah yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.

- Robin Williams

11.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

- Bowen, Catherine Drinker

12.

Character is our destiny.

- Heraclitus

13.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

- Keats, John

14.

It well becomes a young man to be modest.

- Titus Maccius Plautus

15.

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are more careful to conceal than a crime. Many a man will confess his crimes to a friend; but I never knew a man that would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.

- Chesterfield, Lord

16.

One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.

- Junius

17.

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

- Malcolm Forbes

18.

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

- Barthes, Roland

19.

We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to make -- there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations to his fellow men which have been handed down to us by previous generations who lived in far other conditions and possessed far less information about the world and themselves. We have, however, first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge.

- Robinson, James H.

20.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

- Benjamin, Walter