Benjamin Inks > Benjamin's Quotes

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, the greatest luxury is to live a life in which the work that one does to earn a living, and what one has the appetite to make, coincide--by a kind of grace are the same, one.”
― Frank Bidart, Star Dust

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Prince, what you are you are by accident of birth; what I am I am through myself. There have been and still will be thousands of princes; there is only one Beethoven.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“In a city composed wholly of good men there would be a great unwillingness to rule”
― Plato

“Man caught between his heart and soul is like a thin branch whipping between the north wind and the south.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart

“Genius must be the recovery of the powers of childhood by an act of the creative”
― Saul Bellow

“Don’t Lose Track I don’t live in your heart or in your mind, so I cannot judge your intentions or your beliefs. Although your actions may give me a good impression of who you really are as a person, and although I may learn some lessons from your mistakes, I have no right to openly judge you because my purpose in life is not to criticize other people’s lives but to be respectful and considerate of them along my own path to reach my end vision in life. My path may cross with yours, and I may believe that you are on the wrong track, but if I lose track of my path because I’m too busy judging yours, I will waste my time and yours. Who I am and what I believe in are mine to keep, and who you are and what you believe in are yours to keep. They are yours to strengthen, change, or even keep the same. As long as we can be true to ourselves, stay away from hypocrisy, and be respectful toward one another, we will be happy along our paths to reach our dreams. One day, you will realize that there is no one more worthy of your attention or your criticism than yourself. Imagine putting all of the effort and energy you spend criticizing others and exposing their mistakes toward bettering yourself. Wouldn’t you be much more content and happy?”
― Najwa Zebian, Mind Platter

“learning to not envy someone else’s blessings is what grace looks like”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from 'moods' of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of man things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him."

After their survey of the library they went down into the garden, where Candide praised its several beauties.

"I know of nothing in so bad a taste," said the master. "All you see here is merely trifling. After to-morrow I will have it planted with a nobler design."

Well," said Candide to Martin when they had taken their leave, "you will agree that this is the happiest of mortals, for he is above everything he possesses."

"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs are not the best that reject all sorts of food."

"But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Nature

This is what I sound like when I'm thinking”
― Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Heaven

“Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

“To know is to possess, & any fact is possessed by everyone who knows it, whereas those who feel the truth are possessed, not possessors.”
― E. E. Cummings

“It has been said that depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself, (...), and life went on, and people found things to do and ways to be and people to be with, and plausible desirable futures began to emerge, unimaginable previously, but not unimaginable now, and the result was something not unlike relief.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

“Well-directed thought is a learned skill. To manifest an intention requires laserlike focus, full sensory visualization, and a profound belief.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
― Edward Gibbon

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
― Nicholas G. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home." Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.”
― azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.”
― Azar Nafisi

“Writing, regardless of the end result—whether good or bad, published or not, well reviewed or slammed—means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli