Fernando Benelli > Fernando's Quotes

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.”
― Bertrand Russell

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.”
― Bertrand Russell

“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”
― Bertrand Russell

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge”
― Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits

“Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell

“We do need to realize, though, that it is the quality of our love that determines the quality of this life.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell

“It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance”
― Epictetus

“When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
― John A. Shedd

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“Courage is found in unlikely places.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Courage is grace under pressure.”
― ernest hemingway

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.”
― Adam Lindsay Gordon

“Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?”
― J.M. Coetzee