John MacIntyre > John's Quotes

“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“You're physically incapable of having friends. All you can ever have are enemies and stooges.”
― Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“How old are you? I asked her.
"Old enough to know better." she said.”
― J.D. Salinger , The Catcher in the Rye

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia

“In times of war, the law falls silent.

Silent enim leges inter arma”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

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

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Non nobis solum nati sumus.

(Not for ourselves alone are we born.)”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
― Pablo Picasso

“It takes two to make an accident.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby