Richard > Richard's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.”
― Neil Gaiman

“The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.”
― Stéphane Mallarme

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch.”
― Signe Pike, Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
― Michael Palin

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
― Mark Twain

“Don't interrupt me while I'm interrupting.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“I never fail. It's just that the people around me succeed more than I.”
― Carroll Bryant

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“Chocolate is a vegetable. Honest.”
― Ashok Banker

“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.”
― Jane Yolen, Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood

“It just doesn't seem right to spend your entire life drinking, when you could be exploring the world."
"Or," Zhy said as he hefted a mug to his lips, "it doesn't seem right to be risking your life running down warlocks when you could be sitting on a nice, warm bar stool.”
― Martin D. Gibbs

“To survive, you must tell stories.”
― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature