Arthur Cravan > Arthur Cravan's Quotes

“Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“I'm going to write ceaselessly about the dignity of human beings no matter who and or what they are, and the less dignity a person has the fewer words I'll use.”
― Jack Kerouac

“You think I'm a sissy?
I will sodomize you and face-fuck you.”
― Catullus, The Complete Poems

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying...or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: "To do what needs doing." Look inward. Don't let the true nature of anything elude you. Before long, all existing things will be transformed, to rise like smoke (assuming all things become one), or be dispersed in fragments...to move from one unselfish act to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness...when jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”
― Jack London

“The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.”
― Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavour to flee from another's, which is not.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies all problems.”
― Ellis Peters

“Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.”
― Joe Klein, Primary Colors

“The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.”
― E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

“This machine kills fascists.”
― Woody Guthrie

“Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.”
― Hubert Selby Jr.

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
― Abraham Lincoln