Debby > Debby 's Quotes

“The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”
― John Dewey

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Socrates

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates

“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.”
― Socrates

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Socrates

“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
― Socrates

“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you’ll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We’re friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don’t seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”
― Paul McCartney

“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway.”
― Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

“With lacquerware there is an extra beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth, when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation ... a moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.”
― Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Achievement is talent plus preparation”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Life is long if you know how to use it.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It