Warwick Gilbert > Warwick Gilbert's Quotes

“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”
― Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou

“It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”
― W.C. Fields

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Atticus, he was real nice."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
― Maya Angelou

“Autumn is my spring!”
― August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
― Winston Churchill

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
― Winston Churchill

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.”
― Alain de Botton

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
― Thomas Merton, Love and Living

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
― Brené Brown