Doing Good Quotes (page 76)
We are full of things which take us out of ourselves. Our instinct makes us feel that we must seek our happiness outside ourselves. Our passions impel us outside, even when no objects present themselves to excite them. External objects tempt us of themselves, and call to us, even when we are not thinking of them. And thus philosophers have said in vain, " Retire within yourselves, you will find your good there." We do not believe them, and those who believe them are the most empty and the...
Blaise Pascal
I was born very, very lazy and I don't always practice very long. but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of 'Oh, I know this,' you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary? and the audience feels it.
Arthur Rubinstein
Wert thou that just Maid who once before
Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth,
And cam'st again to visit us once more?
Or wet thou that sweet smiling Youth?
Or any other of the heavenly brood
Let down in cloudy throne to do the world good?
Or wert thou of the golden-winged host,
Who, having clad thyself in human weed,
To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post And after short abode fly back with speed
As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed;
Thereby to set the hearts of men on...
John Milton
That is because you don't yet know how to deal with time," said Wen. "But I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not."Will I have to wash it?" said Clodpool. Wen gave him a long, slow look."That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which, do you think, it was?"Clodpool looked at his feet. Then he looked at the sky. Then...
Terry Prachett
So I have just one wish for you? the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
Richard P. Feynman
I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too,...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength,...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
My life has been the polar opposite of safe, but I am proud of it and so is my son, and that is good enough for me. I would do it all over again without changing the beat, although I have never recommended it to others. That would be cruel and irresponsible and wrong, I think, and I am none of those things.
Hunter S. Thompson
After Gary had given the enlargements their sour baths, he raised the lights and discovered that both prints were webbed over with peculiar yellow blotches. He cursed a little, not so much because he cared about the prints as because he wanted to preserve his good spirits, his serotonin-rich mood, and to do this he needed... cooperation from the world of objects.
Jonathan Franzen
It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else. Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born...
Betty Smith
That's most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. Iwas weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. Morescientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But aharsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could notremain, and she was holding it and pleading,...
Kazuo Ishiguro