Better Words Than I Got: For To Steal – aka Quotes

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow. I must have a dark side also, if I’m to be whole.”

“The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.”

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

“Everyone’s frightened. It’s how you deal with that fear. It’s very, very powerful. And what you’ve got to do is get it as a tailwind instead of a headwind. And that’s a little bit of a judo trick in your mind. And once you learn that, fear starts to excite you. Because you know that you are going to enter into something and try it and risk.”

“There’s this whole level of appreciation that everything takes time, everything takes the right amount of nurturing, everything deserves effort because it’s making an effort. This little tomato took three months to grow, and to just toss it or to waste it or to take it so lightly we’re not doing our best to appreciate what nature is truly offering, what the lessons of life that are all around us and trying to teach us.”

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace-and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”

“Smart is when you believe half of what you hear. Brilliant is when you know which half.”

“Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.”

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.”

“I can only guarantee 2 things with my work:

1. You won’t enjoy all of it.

&

2. I will.

“To forgive the unrepentant is like making pictures on water.”

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”

“Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.”

“Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons, but one out of one.”

“It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.”

”The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”

“Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.”

“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

“The most boring aspect of contemporary life is people incessantly trying to shock you.”

“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”

“The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”

“Masks are wonderfully paradoxical in this way, while they may hide the physical reality, they can show us how a person wants to be seen.”

“The world is tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”

“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply ask, “What else could this mean?””

“Humor is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.”

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

 “We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.”

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate.  It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”

“Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.”

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”

“You know….a long time ago,  being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody’s crazy.”

“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”

“Fools look to tomorrow. Wise men use tonight.”

“Only a fool tests the water with both feet.”

“Praying kneads no dough.”

“When a snowball starts to roll, push.”

“That’s the funny thing about marriage. You fall in love with this extraordinary person and over time they begin to seem ordinary. I think it’s all the nagging.”

“The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it!”

“I’m a nut, but not just a nut.”

“Jim Jarmusch once told me Fast, Cheap, and Good…pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good it won’t be cheap. Fast, cheap and good…pick (2) words to live by.”

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”