Quotes

A talent hits a target no one else can hit; a genius hits a target no one else can see.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.

Better the devil you know.

Believe those who are seeking truth, doubt those who find it.

Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

You can learn a lot from your mistakes when you aren’t busy denying them.

Fear and desire hold the power to disrupt one’s rhythm. Desire clouds one’s vision, while fear stills one’s step.

To fight the abyss… one must know it.

Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.

When the student is ready, the master arrives.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

It is very important to learn from the mistakes of others, because you don’t have the time to make them all yourself.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

It’s more important to master the cards you’re holding than to complain about the ones your opponents were dealt.

Working for a better tomorrow isn’t a one-time thing. Tomorrows keep coming.

I’m not big on sermons. Broken bones teach better lessons.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

You’re here to cross the swamp, not fight all the alligators.

We are not desperate for help, we only seek the strong.

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.

So steel yourself and remember there can be no bravery without madness.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before; and that, my love, is bravery.

Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.

A happy life consists not in the absence but in the mastery of hardships.

God, please give me the courage to change what I can, the strength to accept what I can’t, and the wisdom to tell them apart.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

Do not be sorry. Be better.

To have something you never had, you have to do something you never did.

True nobility is not in being superior to your fellow man, but in being superior to your former self.

A man must suffer if he is to remake himself; for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which the human body is capable.

The only way out is through.

Fac et spera.

Every day it gets a little easier, but you have to do it every day. That’s the hard part.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

A falling knife has no handle.

Res, non verba.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

The hardest choices require the strongest wills.

A cat that dreams of becoming a lion must lose its appetite for rats.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Manners maketh man.

Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honour matters. The silence is your answer.

Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

An apology is a promise to do things differently next time, and to keep the promise.

To lead people, walk behind them.

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Show respect to people who don’t even deserve it; not as a reflection of their character, but as a reflection of yours.

Character is what you are in the dark.

Suum cuique

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; it is also what it takes, on occasion, to sit down and listen.

Mea maxima culpa

One can only be brave when he’s afraid.

If the world was blind, how many people would you impress?

For as thou urgest justice, be assured, Thou shalt have justice more than thou desirest.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Action is character.

The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause. The mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

Those who don’t build must burn.

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

If I ignore a friend when I have the ability to help, wouldn’t I be betraying him?

I see something long-absent in the sunken faces of passersby—a glimmer of hope.

When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.

Never take a person’s dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.

Forgive, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.

To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

E pluribus unum

Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

United we stand, divided we fall.

It’s better to live on your feet than to die on your knees.

Never forget what you are, for the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour and it can never be used to hurt you.

Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.

These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.

If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.

When I say it doesn’t hurt me, that means I can bear it. I can feel the pain.

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

There is nothing here, but what’s here’s mine.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

It’s beautiful beneath the sea, but if you stay too long you’ll drown.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

You should enjoy the little detours in life. To the fullest. Because that’s where you’ll find the things more important than what you want.

Don’t die until you are dead.

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which bridge to burn.

So you say you’re under a curse? So what? So’s the whole damn world.

Memento mori

No matter where you go, there you are.

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.

Life is but the shipwreck of our plans.

Many places I have been Many sorrows I have seen But I don’t regret Nor will I forget All who took the road with me

No king rules forever, my son.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in one.

To the dead, a kingdom means nothing. They have their requiem and eternity.

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Common symptoms of normal life.

The price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted.

Tempus edax rerum.

A road paved by the souls of passersby.

I died from minerality and became vegetable; And from vegetativeness, I died and became animal. I died from animality and became man. Then why fear disappearance through death? Next time I shall die Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels; After that, soaring higher than angels— What you cannot imagine, I shall be that.

Death can have me when it earns me.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough.

Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.

We make our way through everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.

Still, isn’t it nice to be nice, to hold a breath? Isn’t it good to save up for it, and really relish it, just sometimes?

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind And you my friend, my new fun thing My summerfling

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.

Ex nihilo.

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

To the victor go the spoils.

Desire becomes surrender. Surrender becomes power.

True power is not something that comes to those who seek it, it’s something that finds those who deserve it.

Meruem, King of Ants, you understand nothing of humanity’s infinite potential for malice.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

Awash in blood and delusion, he bears the burden of a thousand lifetimes.

The frontline of this war is not in the dungeon, but rather inside the mind.

Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe.

Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh.

Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king.

That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

If pride is a sin… moral pride is the greatest sin.

Power resides where men believe it resides.

Curious is the trap maker’s art. His efficacy unwitnessed by his own eyes.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.

Well, I give up. You can’t win against fools.

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

In vino veritas.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

Them’s fighting words.

I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.

Shiver me timbers.

To deal with hyper-planes in a 14-dimensional space, visualize a 3-D space and say “fourteen” to yourself very loudly. Everyone does it.