Vernon Goddard > Vernon's Quotes

“How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.”
― Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”

[Roark] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.”
― Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.”
― Philip Roth, The Human Stain

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

“How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.”
― Jonathan Franzen

“But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so
beautifully -- got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.”
― David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”
― P.D. Ouspensky

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“over 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.”
― David Mitchell, Number9Dream

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Folks with most to complain about seldom complain most.”
― David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability.”
― Ron White

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love,
often deciphered by children”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.”
― Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe

“To know means to know all. Not to know all means not to know. In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little. But, in order to know this little, it is first necessary to know pretty much.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World