Brian Vent > Brian's Quotes

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
― May Sarton

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
― Bertrand Russell

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
― Horace Mann

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight”
― Ezra Pound

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.”
― Paula Fox

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”
― Sue Grafton, M is for Malice

“It is never too late to be wise.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.”
― Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance

“If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.”
― Katharine Hepburn

“Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!”
― Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City

“I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.”
― Meriwether Lewis

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”
― Adrienne Rich

“If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.”
― Gary Paulsen, The Winter Room

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Selected Poems

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
― Janet Frame