Give fools their gold and knaves their power, let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall, who sows a field or trains a flower or plants a tree, is more than all.
~ John Greenleaf Whittier
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Courage
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
~ Harper Lee
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Character
Competence is how good you are when there is something to gain. Character is how good you are when there is nothing to gain. People will reward you for competence. But people will only love you for your character.
~ Mark Manson
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It can’t be done
Morale is when your hands and feet keep on working when your head says it can’t be done.
~ Ben Morcell
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Creativity
The highest form of creativity is found by improvising within a set of restrictions.
~ Christopher Nolan
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Understanding
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them.
~ Baruch Spinoza
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It’s the cake
A party without a cake is really just a meeting.
~ Julia Child
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Watch, quietly
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.
~ T.H. White
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I arrange my thoughts
[A]s I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; It’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true.
~ Haruki Murakami
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Success
Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.
~ Warren Buffett
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Happiness
You are genuinely happy if you don’t know why.
~ Joseph Mayer
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Wrong
Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.
~ David McRaney
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Experience
Experience is not what happens to you; It is what you do with what happens to you.
~ Aldous Huxley
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Moving
So much to lose or so it seems
~ Max Collins
These idle games and children’s dreams
How they confound and split the seams
Inside my mind, I just keep moving on
Into the unknown
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Plans
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
~ Allen Saunders
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Interesting
Anything is interesting if you dig deep enough, observe it from the correct angle, or talk to the right enthusiast.
~ Jason Kottke
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Try
Don’t say you can’t until you prove you can’t.
~ Les Paul
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Kindness
The older you get the more you realize that kindness is synonymous with happiness.
~ Lionel Barrymore
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Don’t interrupt
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.
~ Henry J. Kaiser
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Insignificance
The end of the race is just a temporary marker without much significance. It’s the same with our lives. Just because there’s an end doesn’t mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence. It’s very philosophical—not that at this point I’m thinking how philosophical it is. I just vaguely experience this idea, not with words, but as a physical sensation.
~ Haruki Murakami
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