Kate > Kate's Quotes

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
― Lao Tzu

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
― Lao Tzu

“in the pursuit of knowledge:
everyday something is added.
in the pursuit of enlightenment:
everyday something is dropped.”
― Lao Tzu

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.”
― Lily Tomlin

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“You ultimately decide, every day, whether or not your life will speak on behalf of the oppressed, or remain an inaudible but decisive tool for the status quo.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”
― Carl Jung

“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.”
― Paulo Coelho

“Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily”
― Paulo Coelho

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next?”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Either way, he figured a cup of coffee would hit the spot. For what is more versatile? As at home in tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“the wise man celebrates what he can.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
― Abraham Maslow

“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”
― Abraham Maslow

“I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”
― Abraham Maslow

“The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.”
― Abraham Maslow

“The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.”
― Abraham Maslow