canoe > canoe's Quotes

“Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle

“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.”
― Albert Einstein, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

“Scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been.”
― Albert Einstein

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. —Aristotle”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters.”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Hygge / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living

“We don't create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is, to welcome them.”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Hygge / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
― Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“There are more things to admire in men then to despise.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves. The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible. They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“You can be the king, but watch the queen conquer.”
― Nicki Minaj

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”
― Philippe Ariès

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”
― Joan Didion, Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”
― Joan Didion

“Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch—terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.”
― Rube Goldberg, Inventions: The Legendary Works (A) of America’s (B) Most Honored (C) Cartoonist

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts