Nicholas > Nicholas's Quotes

“Parade my trouble in front of you guys? Make you realize that my heart is broken . . . that as long as I live I'll have chains dragging me down to the oceans of sad tears that my feet are wet in already.”
― Jack Kerouac, Maggie Cassidy

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“My Parents had early given me religious Impressions, and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the different Books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some Books against Deism fell into my Hands; they were said to be the Substance of Sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them: For the Arguments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon became a thorough Deist.

[Part I, p. 45 of autobiography]”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka bottle empty.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Jill the Reckless

“There's an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper.”
― Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”
― Sun-Tzu, A Arte da Guerra

“ignorance is the enemy of democracy”
― Thomas Jeferson

“The happiest men in the world are the men who swore that they would never become their fathers.That is how the alpha males became endangered. Their sons decided that they would not become their fathers,they would be decent men,they would not sleep with strangers through the night,they would instead wipe baby shit,they would know at all times the ages of their children and the names of their teachers,they would buy curtains,they would transfer food from large bowls into smaller bowls and put them in the fridge,they would not be their fathers.In a world full of new men who did not want to be their fathers,what chance did alpha males have?”
― manu jospeh

“The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.”
― Michelle M. Pillow

“The web is a dangerous place for a mind begging to slack off and be distracted by nonsense.”
― Michelle M. Pillow

“My cat mocks me frequently. It's the universe's way of keeping me from getting too big of an ego.”
― Michelle M. Pillow

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
― Albert Einstein

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying 'hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan.”
― John Green

“XXIX

You have set me among those who are defeated.

I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game.

I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom.

I shall play the game of my undoing.

I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
― Dylan Thomas, In Country Sleep, and Other Poems

“The cicada lies in the earth for seventeen years. It is warm and dark there, it is soft and wet. Its little legs curl underneath it, and twitch only once in a little while. What does the cicada dream when it is folded into the soil? What visions travel through it, like snow flying fast? Its dreams are lightless and secret. It dreams of the leaves it will taste, it composes the concerto it will sing to its mate. It dreams of the shells it will leave behind, like self-portraits. All its dreams are drawn in amber. It dreams of all the children it will make.
And then it emerges from the earth, shaking dust and damp soil from its skin. It knows nothing but its own passion to ascend - it climbs a high stalk of grass and begins to sing, its special concerto to draw the wing-pattern of its beloved near. And as it sings it leaves its amber skin behind, so that in the end, it has sung itself into a new body in which it will mate, and die.
The cicadas leave their shells everywhere, like a child's lost buttons. The shells do not understand the mating dance that now occurs in the mountains above it. The shell knows nothing of who it has been, it does not remember the dreaming of self, that was warm in the earth. The song emptied it, and now it simply waits for the wind or the rain to carry it away.
You are the cicada-in-the-earth. You are the shell-in-the-grass. You do not understand what you dream, only that you dream. And when you begin to sing, the song will separate you from your many skins.
This is the lesson of the cicada's dream.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams

“Your basic Southern Baptist would willingly delay his personal ascent into heaven for the baser pleasure of hanging around to see you burn in hell.”
― Rick Gavin, Ranchero

“An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before.”
― Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir

“I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don’t find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever.”
― Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller- Cartas de Amor