Knowing And Doing Quotes (page 29)
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Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.
Virginia Woolf
Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so—said 'How do you get biscuits to brown so nice?' and 'Where, for the land's sake, did you get these amaz'n pickles?' and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the...
Mark Twain
I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy, you should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razorblade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness...
Ken Kesey
I read the Bible and know little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.
Paulo Coelho
It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing - I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do something one wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better, It...
Doris Lessing
I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell...
J. D. Salinger
How did you know what's been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don't want to hate... Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you--except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do it, you want to know what I think? It's not boring to you? It's important?
Ayn Rand
Yes, Baby...I've been drinkin'...I shouldn't come by I know...but I found myself in trouble, darlin'...and I have no place else to go. Honey I'm guilty..yes I'm guilty...and I'll be guilty for the rest of my life. How come I never do, what I'm supposed to do. Nothin' I try to do ever turns out right. You know how it is with me baby, I just can't stand myself...it takes a whole lotta medicine, darlin'...for me to pretend that I'm somebody else.
Randy Newman
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do...
Joan Didion
It's not the critic who counts. It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled. Credit belongs to the man who really was in the arena, his face marred by dust, sweat, and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs to come short and short again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. It is the man who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm and knows the great devotion, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who at best, knows in the end the...
Theodore Roosevelt
If God 'foresaw' our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose god is outside and above the Time-line... You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He know your tomorrow's actions in just the same way--because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but the moment at which you have done it is...
C. S. Lewis
The Lost Tribe. How long, how long must I regret? I never found my people yet; I go about, but cannot find The blood-relations of the mind. Through my little sphere I range, And though I wither do not change; Must not change a jot, lest they Should not know me on my way. Sometimes I think when I am dead They will come about my bed, For my people well do know When to come and when to go. I know not why I am alone, Nor where my wandering tribe is gone, But be they few, or be they far, Would I...
Ruth Pitter
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that...
Ayn Rand
Diesel rocked back on his heels and grinned at the monkey. “Carl?”
“Eep!” The monkey stood, squinted at Diesel, and gave him the finger.
“Looks like you know each other,” I said.
“Our paths crossed in Trenton,” Diesel said. “How did he get here?”
“Monkey Rescue,” Glo told him. “He was abandoned.”
“Figures,” Diesel said.
The monkey gave him the finger again.
“Does he do that all the time?” I asked Diesel.
“Not all the time.”
“I got him by mistake,” Glo said. “And now we don’t know...
Janet Evanovich
A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he...
Leo Tolstoy