Kitchener > Kitchener's Quotes

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“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

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

“I'm a condition, not a man.”
― J.D. Salinger

“Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address

“I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

“...you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It's just a aggravation.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“And then one day, you too disappear. Your armchair is still there. But instead of you sitting in it, there is just an empty space. You went back to where you came from just a few years ago.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“She smiled. I think it's just the snow. I think it makes people stop and think.
Bell nodded. I hope it comes a blizzard then.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
Because he loved true things, he tried to explain. He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot. And people didn't like him for telling the truth. They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. And some, afraid for their daughters or pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.
And so he stopped telling the truth. He said he was doing it on a bet - that he stood to win a hundred dollars. Everyone liked him then and believed him.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

“All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men