Carefulness Quotes (page 97)
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Fashion and snobbery are also valuable as a defense against literary indigestion. Regardless of their quality, it is always better to read a few books carefully than skim through many, and, short of a personal taste which cannot be formed overnight, snobbery is as good a principle of limitation as any other. I am eternally grateful, for example, to the musical fashion of my youth which prevented me from listening to Italian Opera until I was over thirty, by which age I was capable of really...
W. H. Auden
(Joe) Dimaggio was, in fact, mostly just a cold fish. Not even his brother Dom, who played outfield for the Red Sox..., seemed to care much for the Yankee Clipper. As someone best summed up Dimaggio: "What kind of guy learns to love the most beautiful woman in the world only after she dies?
Frank Deford
A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pullsgentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool; because it liveslike a desperate trained falconin the high sweet air, and you can always haul it downto tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caughtin a pool where no fish come, so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you've writtenso you give it to the wind, but you don't let...
Leonard Cohen
I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impluse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself (...)For what I have always hated and detested and cursed above...
Herman Hesse
Do one thing every day that scares you...Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own...Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
Mary Schmich
Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god --- Love that subdues a world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home, kindred, and religion -- what cares he for the easy conquest of the pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?
Love means equality -- the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the image of God.
Baroness Orczy