First Of All Quotes (page 35)
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Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.
Malcolm Gladwell
The rivalry of the European states in constantly increasing their forces has reduced them to the necessity of having recourse to universal military service, since by that means the greatest possible number of soldiers is obtained at the least possible expense. Germany first hit on this device. And directly one state adopted it the others were obliged to do the same. And by this means all citizens are under arms to support the iniquities practiced upon them; all citizens have become their...
Leo Tolstoy
Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he s not he s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his...
George S. Patton
If indeed it's a race. Then the chicks do the most. It isn't a brag. Or an estrogen boast. It's the women who've led me. With big open hearts. If not for their love. I'd have failed at the start. And it's not just the mothers. I speak of them ALLIt's a woman there first When somebody falls. The multi of tasking. That's easy to tease. I dare a great man. To try it all, PLEASE! So this is my shout out. My rallying cry. To women all over. I hold you up high. And though there are others. Who'll...
Jamie Lee Curtis
I become one of those people who walks alone in the dark at night while others sleep or watch Mary Tyler Moore reruns or pull all-nighters to finish up some paper that's due first thing tomorrow. I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece. I want all my important possessions, my worldly goods, with me...
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with an head-ache, was...
Jane Austen
So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.
Haruki Murakami
Were all first loves like that? Somehow she doubted it; even now it struck her as being more real than anything she'd ever known. Sometimes it saddened her to think that she'd never experience that kind of feeling again, but then life had a way of stamping out that intensity of passion; she'd learned all too well that love wasn't always enough.
Nicholas Sparks
Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It...
Louisa May Alcott
What a lovely thing a rose is!... Our highest assurance of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The music is meant to be provocative—which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it’s dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don’t necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head. You can enjoy a song that knocks in the club or has witty punch lines the first time you hear it. But great rap retains mystery. It leaves shit rattling...
Jay-Z
But Moominpappa wasn't listening, because just at that moment he had got the right grip on a big round boulder, and with a great thud it rolled down the slope. It made two very clear sparks and left a faint but enchanting smell of gunpowder behind. Now it was lying at the bottom, just where it should lie. It was wonderful to roll stones, first pushing with all one's might, then feeling them beginning to move just a little at first -- then a little more -- and then giving way and rolling into...
Tove Jansson
The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom,...
Goldie Hawn