Davis Gloff > Davis's Quotes

“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

“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
― Robert Frost

“It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― Pablo Picasso

“I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“He said cynicism’s self-protection, a defense mechanism used by cowards who give up on love because they’re afraid love’s given up on them.”
― Linda Yellin, What Nora Knew

“Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
― Harry S. Truman

“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing--that when we look for what's best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something sacred.”
― Fred Rogers

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,' I said, 'but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”
― Groucho Marx

“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.”
― Marc Hack

“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
― Malcolm X

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”
― Richard Feynman

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Inventory:

"Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“What fresh hell is this?”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”
― Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun: Poems

“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
― Dorothy Parker

“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”
― Dorothy Parker, You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

“This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

[Women Know Everything!]”
― Dorothy Parker

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”
― Dorothy Parker