Successes Quotes (page 58)
There are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness.
Frank Herbert
The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.
John Steinbeck
I had set myself an unattainable ideal. Such human skill I could summon wasn’t enough for the job. I felt the suicidal despair of all who longed to do what they couldn’t, what only a few in each century could – whether blessed or cursed in spirit. No achievement was ever finite. There was no absolute summit. No peak of Everest to plant a flag on. Success was someone else’s opinion.
Dick Francis
We ate simply, we were healthy, and we were uninterested in those things that should be called possessions not because they are possessed but because they possess. Those ten years were the happiest of my life save the first ten, the years in which I had neither position nor success, and no one took notice of me. Those were the years of the parent holding the child in his arms, lifting him high in the air, and pulling him close. As I held my own son, when he was a baby, God was right there.
Mark Helprin
Such beliefs were born in man's willful refusal to use his mind, in his lust for the unearned, his wish for success without effort. Such beliefs were the embodiment of hatred for all that was good, hatred for virtue, hatred for value. It was ultimately a hatred of themselves, of life, of existence. It was that hate, that dedication to death, that was the true manifestation of evil.
Terry Goodkind
Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our...
Marcus Tullius Cicero
When you put your trust in your dad, he will feel the responsibility of that trust and try harder than ever to understand and to help. As your father, he is entitled to inspiration on your behalf. His advice to you will be the heartfelt expressions of someone who knows and loves you. Your dad wants more than anything for you to be happy and successful, so why would you not want to trust someone like that? Boys, trust your dad.
M. Russell Ballard
Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
John Keegan
I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy.
Lydia Lunch
The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.
Calvin Coolidge