Pat > Pat's Quotes

“Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”
― John Wesley, Letters of John Wesley

“...prayer makes us more sensitive to the manifestations of institutionalized lies.”
― Frei Betto

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”
― Orson Welles

“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”
― Harold Pinter, Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
― George S. Patton

“Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.”
― Wyndham Lewis

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.”
― Anchee Min, Red Azalea: A Memoir

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
― Anne Frank

“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”
― Paula Danziger

“I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them. ”
― Boris Pasternak

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”
― Stephen Jay Gould

“Love can make even nice people do awful things.”
― Jude Deveraux

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.”
― George Saunders

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.”
― Amy Bloom

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
― Anna Quindlen

“Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.”
― Norman Mailer

“Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Well-meaning members lose sight of their role as servants and become increasingly focused on controlling the very church they are called to serve. When a serving heart is replaced by a controlling heart, division is bound to ensue. And when selfish division lies unchallenged, areas of ministry and service become turfs to be defended, and brother and sisters in Christ become opponents and obstacles to individual accomplishment.”
― Darrin Patrick, Replant: How a Dying Church Can Grow Again