Matthew Burpee > Matthew's Quotes

“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“Your life does matter. It always matters whether you reach out in friendship or lash out in anger. It always matters whether you live with compassion and awareness or whether you succumb to distractions and trivia. It always matters how you treat other people, how you treat animals, and how you treat yourself. It always matters what you do. It always matters what you say. And it always matters what you eat.”
― John Robbins, The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“The world is a book, and those who don't travel only read one page.”
― St Augustine

“Once true passion hits you, you can recognize all the times in your life when you were chasing the wrong dream. And after you´ve experienced that sustained fulfillment , you´ll never want to settle for anything else”
― Biz Stone, Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind

“Embrace constraint. What you get in return is the art and craft of editing your own life, weeding out what is and isn’t necessary.”
― Biz Stone, Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind

“Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies.”
― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant

“I believe in political solutions to political problems. But man's primary problems aren't political; they're philosophical. Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, they're condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. It's a cruel, repetitious bore.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Fear is the lack of faith in one's ability to create powerful solutions.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing that solutions don’t come from individuals, but rather experiences.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.”
― Max McKeown, Innovation Book, The: How to Manage Ideas and Execution for Outstanding Results

“As always, the solutions is the simplest way: we have to start and lead by example.”
― Da Anunciação Marco

“Absence of problems
   does not lead to happiness.
     Dealing with them does.”
― J. Benson, Haiku to Live By: Life affirming messages, to hearten your day

“Sometimes the most complex problems can be solved with the simplest solutions.”
― Bijan Shrestha

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“Cynicism is a disease. Optimism is the cure.”
― Aakashvani

“Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“We are constantly trying to hold it all together. If you really want to see why you do things, then don't do them and see what happens.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Politics is not about big money or power games; it's about the improvement of people's lives”
― Paul Wellstone

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can’t be quantified and calculated, then it can’t be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn’t how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.”
― Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

“Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“A stranger is just a friend you haven't met.”
― Roy E. Stolworthy

“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride