Richard > Richard's Quotes

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“... the devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for ...”
― Tucker Max, Assholes Finish First

“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus

“The samurai all practiced the disciplines of the Zen sect, a religion without preaching, indeed without any doctrine she could perceive, all serious and grim and silent. Was it a religion at all? She once asked Genji to explain it to her, and he just laughed.
There is little to explain. I only play at it. I am too lazy to truly do it.
What is done?
He sat in the contortionist position called the lotus, with each foot on the opposite thigh, and closed his eyes.
And what is it you are doing? It seems to me you are doing nothing at all.
I am letting go, Genji said.
Letting go? Letting go of what?
First, bodily tension. Second, thoughts. Third, everything else.
To what end?
You are so much a person of the West, Genji said, always thinking of ends. The means are the end. You sit. You let go.
And once you have let go, then what?
Then you let go of letting go.
I don’t understand.
Genji smiled, uncrossed his legs, and said, Old Zengen would say that’s a good beginning.”
― Takashi Matsuoka, Kastel Awan Burung Gereja

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
― Studs Terkel

“The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.”
― Ingmar Bergman

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.”
― Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep

“Words were different when they lived inside of you.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“livid, adj.

Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
― George Washington

“Even when you have doubts, take that step. Take chances. Mistakes are never a failure—they can be turned into wisdom.”
― Cat Cora

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong'.
Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.”
― Charlie Schultz

“Demons run when a good man goes to war
Night will fall and drown the sun
When a good man goes to war

Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise
When a good man goes to war

Demons run, but count the cost
The battle's won, but the child is lost”
― Steven Moffat

“If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!”
― Adolf Hitler

“I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”
― James Jones, From Here to Eternity

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus

“I just want you to know that you’re very special… and the only reason I’m telling you is that I don’t know if anyone else ever has.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”
― John Henry Newman

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
― Confucius

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― Robert Frost

“. . . when it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.”
― Rebecca Walker, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence