Sumit > Sumit's Quotes

“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
― Niels Bohr, Essays 1932-1957 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. 2)

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened".”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny

“I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I don't want to die without any scars.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”
― Frida Kahlo

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Many thousands of people can write code. But only a relative few can get the psychology right.”
― Stephen Wendel, Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics

“Man's character is his fate.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”
― Cal newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

“When people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentration upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem.”
― Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”
― Johann Sebastian Bach

“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“To suffer without complaint is the only lesson we have to learn in this life”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words”
― Vincent Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis