Good Things Quotes (page 58)
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He said I was bein hard on myself. Said it was a sign of old age. Tryin to set things right. I guess there's some truth to that. But it aint the whole truth. I agreed with him that there wasnt a whole lot good you could say about old age and he said he knew one thing and I said what is that. And he said it dont last long. I waited for him to smile but he didn't. I said well, that's pretty cold. And he said it was no colder than what the facts called for. So that was all there was about that.
Cormac McCarthy
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course...
Mark Twain
That's how it is, Rocamadour: in Paris we're like fungus, we grow on the railings of staircases, in dark rooms with greasy smells, where people make love all the time and then fry some eggs and put on Vivaldi records, light cigarettes... and outside there are all sorts of things, the windows open onto the air and it all begins with a sparrow or a gutter, it rains a lot here, rocamadour, much more than in the country, and things get rusty... we don't have many clothes, we get along with so...
Julio Cortazar
I find this to be true of my spiritual life, and maybe it applies to yours as well: I think about things more than I do them; I ponder what seems their goodness more than I perform them. As if my thought alone were enough. But a thought alone isn’t quite enough; it’s an impulse and not a commitment, a passing thing that doesn’t take root unless you plant it and make it grow.
Peggy Noonan
So -- I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me -- if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature. I can only protest, like all rakes in their shameful senescence, that I have had a good time.
Robertson Davies
I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish...
Jane Goodall
Always remember, child" her first teacher had impressed on her, "that to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that need disipline –training- is about. So train your mind to dwell on sweet perfumes, the touch of this silk, tender raindrops against the shoji, the curve of the flower arrangement, the...
James Clavell
There were a lot of things he could say. "Son of a bitch!" would have been a good one. Or he could say, "Welcome to civilization!" He could have said, "Laugh this one off!" He might have said, "Fetch!" But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder.
Terry Prachett
When I was a kid--10, 11, 12, 13--the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: "There's never gonna be a room someplace where there's a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, 'You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.' That'll...
Fiona Apple
Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then-- as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three.
Tyler Perry