James Schoch > James's Quotes

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“When YOU stop believing one person in the world cannot make a difference; differences in the world will be made.”
― Kellie Elmore

“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ: Library Edition: Includes PDF eBooks

“Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“It is more beautiful to trust in God. The beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he loves me.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.”
― Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

“Of the many species that have existed on earth--estimates run as high as fifty billion--more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.
more than a rounding error.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert

“I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.”
― Tupac Shakur

“I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, there's a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep ya head up.... and handle it.”
― Tupac Shakur

“There's gon' be some stuff you gon' see
that's gon' make it hard to smile in the future.
But through whatever you see,
through all the rain and the pain,
you gotta keep your sense of humor.
You gotta be able to smile through all this bullshit.
Remember that.”
― Tupac Shakur

“I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.”
― Tupac Shakur

“You're right.I am crazy. But you know what else? I don't give a fuck.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Why am I fighting to live,
If I am just living to fight
Why am I trying to see.
When there aint nothing in sight
Why am I trying to give,
When no one gives me a try
Why am I dying to live,
If I am just living to die?”
― Tupac Shakur

“They Have Money For War But Can't Feed The Poor.”
― Tupac Shakur

“If you can make it through the night, there's a brighter day.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Reality is wrong. Dreams are for the real.”
― Tupac Shakur

“I want to grow. I want to be better. You Grow. We all grow. We're made to grow.You either evolve or you disappear.”
― Tupac Shakur

“A coward dies a thousand times, a soldier dies but once.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Since we all came from a women, got our name from a women, and our game from a women. I wonder why we take from women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think its time we killed for our women, be real to our women, try to heal our women, cus if we dont we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies, who make the babies. And since a man can't make one he has no right to tell a women when and where to create one”
― Tupac Shakur

“Only God Can Judge Me
That which does not kill me can only make me stronger. I don't see why everybody feel as though that they gotta tell me how to live my
life ”
― Tupac Shakur

“There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Never surrender, it's all about the faith you got: don't ever stop, just push it 'till you hit the top and if you drop, at least you know you gave your all to be true to you, that way you can never fall”
― Tupac Shakur

“In life there are going to be some things that make it hard to smile. Through all the rain and pain you got to keep your sense of humor and smile for me now. Remember that.”
― Tupac Shakur

“During your life, never stop dreaming. No one can take away your dreams”
― Tupac Shakur

“Everybody’s at war with different things…I’m at war with my own heart sometimes.”
― Tupac Shakur

“I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass