Aidan > Aidan's Quotes

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

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates

“To be is to do - Socrates

To do is to be - Sartre

Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“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

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
― Socrates

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

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
― Socrates

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

“Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art

Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art

Not many have style
Not many can keep style
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.

I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.”
― Charles Bukowski

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

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”
― Confucius

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

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

“If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.”
― Confucius

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

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
― Confucius

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“The funniest people are the saddest ones”
― Confucius

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
― Confucius

“Study the past if you would define the future.”
― Confucius

“To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.”
― Confucius