A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
~ Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea as we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
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A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All this happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may sharpen our art.
~ Jorge Luis Borges
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We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
~ Denis Diderot
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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
~ Goethe
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Silence is exhilarating at first—as noise is—but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
~ Edward Hoagland
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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
~ Francis Chan
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There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.
~ Fred Rogers
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The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.
~ Anthony Jay
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A great challenge of life: Knowing enough to think you are right, but not knowing enough to know you are wrong.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
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I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.
~ Agnes Varda
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People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you’re going to see just about all that you can handle.
~ Paul Auster
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Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
~ Bill Nye
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Leading into a world of unknowns, a world where you don’t have the answer, the best you can do is to ask better questions, as well as help those around you to do the same.
~ Pascal Finette
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To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do.) Each of us must find our work and do it.
~ Audre Lorde
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People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
~ Carl Jung
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Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
~ Simone Weil
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I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
~ Stephen Jay Gould
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Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
~ Susan Ertz
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Vulnerable is the only way we can feel when we truly share the art we’ve made. When we share it, when we connect, we have shifted the power and made ourselves naked in front of the person we’ve given the gift of our art to. We have no excuses, no manual to point to, no standard operating procedures to protect us. And that is part of our gift.
~ Seth Godin
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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
~ James Baldwin
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