Nigel > Nigel's Quotes

“Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
― Anatole France

“Remember that the fool in the eyes of the gods and the fool in the eyes of man are very different. One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of Art in its revolution or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greeks, of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a one too long. Be so no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings

“There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever of the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?', there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, 'Wehave nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The Bible is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.”
― Ellen G. White

“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”
― G K Chesterton

“There is a popular saying in Japan that goes “Tada yori takai mono wa nai,” meaning: “Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge.” THE UNSPOKEN WAY, MICHIHIRO MATSUMOTO, 1988”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
― Jean de La Fontaine, Fables

“The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.
But such a character is not the result of accident; it is not due to special favors or endowments of Providence. A noble character is the result of self-discipline, of the subjection of the lower to the higher nature—the surrender of self for the service of love to God and man.
The youth need to be impressed with the truth that their endowments are not their own. Strength, time, intellect, are but lent treasures. They belong to God, and it should be the resolve of every youth to put them to the highest use. He is a branch, from which God expects fruit; a steward, whose capital must yield increase; a light, to illuminate the world's darkness.
Every youth, every child, has a work to do for the honor of God and the uplifting of humanity.”
― Ellen G. White, Education

“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your own clothes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.”
― Plutarch

“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
― Archilochus

“When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Young men, I beseech you earnestly, beware of pride. Two things are said to be very rare sights in the world— one is a young man that is humble, and the other is an old man that is content. I fear that this is only too true.”
― J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men

“Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“...Feel no fear before the multitude of men, do not run in panic,
but let each man bear his shield straight toward the fore-fighters,
regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark spirits of death as dear as the radiance of the sun.”
― Tyrtaeus, Spartan Lessons; Or, the Praise of Valour; In the Verses of Tyrtaeus; An Ancient Athenian Poet, ...

“Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace.”
― Thomas Watson

“Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud, Foley thought.”
― Tom Clancy, The Cardinal of the Kremlin

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“They fear their higher self, because when it speaks, it speaks demandingly.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself”
― Michel de Montaigne

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
― Socrates

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door

“How Did You Die?
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there - that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts;
It's how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why the critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?”
― Edmund Vance Cooke

“Forewarned is forearmed...”
― Samuel Shellabarger, Prince of Foxes