KL > KL's Quotes

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
― Conan O'Brien

“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.”
― Conan O'Brien

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A simple idea, therefore, is one that finds the core of the problem. It takes no special talent to see the complex in the complex. Cutting through the clutter to see the simple in the complex is what distinguishes great scientists from the merely competent.”
― Joshua Schimel, Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Remember—getting published is not the ultimate goal; getting cited is.”
― Joshua Schimel, Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded

“The pain of an embarrassing review lasts a few days, the pain of an embarrassing paper lasts a lifetime.”
― Joshua Schimel, Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded

“There is nothing more liberating than having your worst fear realized.”
― Conan O'Brien

“When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “It happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.”
― Aristotle

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Kindness begins with the understanding that we all struggle.”
― Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try to live so that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Dear Lord,' he said. 'let me be like Aron. Don’t make me mean. I don’t want to be. If you will let everybody like me, why, I’ll give you anything in the world, and if I haven’t got it, why, I’ll go for to get it. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be lonely. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Go through the motions, Adam.” “What motions?” “Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Help him, Adam--help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's all a man has over the beasts. Free him! Bless him!”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden