Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.
Promiscuous ... was a word I had never applied to myself. Possibly no one ever does, for it is a sordid word, reducing many valuable moments to nothing more than doglike copulation.
To lead means to direct and to exact, and no man dares do either - he might be unpopular. What authority we are given now is a trinity: the grin, the generality, and God (the Word).
Not offering this kind of guarantee means that they do not believe in their product enough, and they do not care about if a salesman is over promising or over selling their product.
I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.
If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget.
The influence of the Church does not depend on the Church, it depends on the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will never lose its influence. He is God and He is influencing society.
If we could solve the problem of who we are and where we are going, that it would have a huge impact on the culture and waterfall in on some of the more practical and social issues.
I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.
You have to deal with what you encounter. But you must not be reduced. And so a way not to be reduced is don't whine! Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low.
Cursed?" I offered, my voice croaky because of my unshed tears. "It isn't cursed." John said deliberately, rearranging the chain around my neck, "if you're wearing it. It's blessed.
Then again maybe there's something that I've been doing in the privacy of my own bedroom my whole life that I think is perfectly normal but is actually illegal in thirty-two states.
Opinion is dominating, which is absolutely ridiculous - there wouldn't be anything for people to have opinions about if there weren't people out there gathering facts on the ground.
I don’t want to make the same mistakes I’ve made before. I want to be free. I want to be with you. We will be together. I believe I will have less to live for, if I am not with you.
To a society that inarticulately and thoughtlessly takes itself to be divine, Hegel says, Yes, we are indeed divine, and philosophy can show how this is both possible and necessary.
Mirror sighed. "I believe everyone deserves a happily ever after. But I think that happy endings don't just happen by accident- you can't wait for one. You have to make them happen.
Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.
The E Myth. Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.
Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.
The desire to be part of something greater and to occupy life more fully, is also a desire to touch and be touched by the living imagination that sustains each soul and all of life.
The first step towards solving the omnivore's dilemma is knowledge: eating with full consciousness. When that happens, I have a lot of confidence that people will make good choices.
Not all of our heartless plans work as we intend; nor do all of our good intentions. We are where we are, and we can rarely predict where we will go, no matter how firm our beliefs.
Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.
When you see the body outside of a costume and see the strength that it takes, people would look at dance a different way and see how athletic it is. You're not just born like that.
There are hundreds of stories I've heard from black women from my generation, generations before me, and the next, that have never been given an opportunity to fulfill their dreams.
There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz
Before, you think of it as a permanent bond of happiness; later, you see that it is a yoke, borne unequally. You marry to keep love, but sometimes that is the surest way to lose it.
Are your eyelashes like your hair?” “Yes. They’re very beautiful—want to see?” Her lips twitched. “Vanity is a sin,Bluebell.” “When you have it, flaunt it, I say.” -Elena and Illium
You can't write a thing that is hermetically sealed; there has to be a way for the audience to get in and participate. I think that's a massively valuable discipline for any artist.
Somewhere in your make-up there lies sleeping, the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights, such as you may never have hoped to attain.
The subconscious mind is more susceptible to influence by impulses of thought mixed with 'feeling' or emotion, than by those originating solely in the reasoning portion of the mind.
I am thankful for the adversities, which have crossed my pathway, for they taught me tolerance, sympathy, self-control, perseverance and some other virtues I might never have known.
If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'
I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.
Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.
Honor your body. Keep it in good shape. It is the most important physical tool that you have. Exercise is the meditation of the body. It allows you to feel Oneness with all of Life.
I think Easterners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their mind about God, and I think Westerners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their heart center about God.
Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)
In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.
It's much different today than it was during the Cold War. The CIA is not the subject of many books anymore. But that might change, because of international terrorism and Red China.
To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.
I want you to take note, Commander, that turning in my badge would be like cutting off my arm. But if it comes down to a choice between the job and my marriage, then I lose the arm.
Three weeks hadn't changed Cop Central. The coffee was still poisonous, the noise abominable, and the view out of her stingy window was still miserable. She was thrilled to be back.
No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.
Whatever you do, don't discourage your dreaming propensity. Your heart's desires are not empty vaporings. They foreshadow possible realities. Man was made to aspire, to look upward.
No one can make the most of himself until he looks upon his life as a magnificent possibility, the materials for a great masterpiece, to mar or spoil which would be a great tragedy.
If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt....There is no believing without some doubting, and believing is all the stronger for understanding and resolving doubt.
As a successful romantic novelist - one of my publishers is Mills & Boon - I create the sort of male heroes that no woman could fail to adore and few real men could hope to emulate.
The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.
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.