Quotes I like

At a friend’s wedding, we all got T-shirts printed with a personalised superlative. Here’s mine:

Indeed, for as long as I can remember I’ve liked committing quotes and passages to memory and have been known to insert them into daily conversations, much to friends’ chagrin.

Below is a collection of quotes that have resonated with me over the years.

James Joyce:

I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. (Ulysses)

Friedrich Nietzsche:

Madness is something rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule. (Beyond Good and Evil)

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Stephen King:

Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon. Or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up.

Gustave Flaubert:

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

W. H. Auden:

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

Elizabeth King:

Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.

Nikos Kazantzakis:

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. (Zorba the Greek)

Dr. Govinda Venkataswamy:

Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must be the joy of doing something beautiful. When we grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify ourselves with all that is in the world and there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping, it is ourselves that we are healing.

Shakespeare:

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. (Lorenzo to Jessica, The Merchant of Venice)

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. (Brutus to Cassius, Julius Caesar)

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world. Like a Colossus. (Cassius to Brutus, Julius Caesar)

If music be the food of love, play on. (Orsino, Twelfth Night)

To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? (Hamlet)

Zbigniew Herbert:

To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

One should be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Winston Churchill:

Success if not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.

To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a great and mighty thing; unique to him and fitted to his talents; what a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial… I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Khalil Gibran:

Work is love made visible. And if you can’t work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy.

William Blake:

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.

Paul Graham:

You have to make an extraordinary effort initially. Any strategy that omits the effort—whether it’s expecting a big launch to get you users, or a big partner—is ipso facto suspect.

José Ortega y Gasset:

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, “here and now” without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.

Donald Miller:

When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked harder to make a day stand out…a good movie has memorable scenes, and so does a good life.

Margaret Thatcher:

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s a day you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it.

Nikola Tesla:

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

James Michener:

Whatever I did, there was always someone around who was better qualified. They just didn’t bother to do it.

Ryan Holiday:

Waste not a second questioning another man’s courage. Put that scrutiny solely on your own.

Ernest Hemingway:

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Anaïs Nin:

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Florence Nightingale:

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

Frank Borman II:

A superior fighter pilot uses his superior judgement to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.

Peter F. Drucker:

Any time I have seen someone accomplishing something magnificent, they have been a monomaniac with a mission. A single-minded individual with a passion.

Charles Bukowski:

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Style is the answer to everything, A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing, To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it, To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. (Style)

Unless it comes unasked out of your heart, your mind, and your gut, don't do it.

Kanye West:

Dopeness is what I like the most. People who want to make things as dope as possible and, by default, make money from it. The thing I like the least are people who only want to make money from things whether they’re dope or not and especially making money at making things as least dope as possible.

Bruce Lee:

If you put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Conor McGregor:

Precision beats power, timing beats speed.

George Patton:

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

G. H. Hardy:

A man’s first duty, a young man’s at any rate, is to be ambitious, and the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent value.

Jerry Seinfeld:

Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you are comfortable with. That's marriage, it's kids, it's work, it's exercise. Find the torture you're comfortable with and you'll do well. You've mastered that, you've mastered life.

Bobby Axelrod (character in Billions):

The moral of the story is you get one life, so do it all.

Octavia Butler:

Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel:

Life is short. We don't have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Steve Jobs:

Most people never ask. And that's what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of others people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Marc Andreessen:

The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.

Freeman Dyson:

The history of mathematics is a history of horrendously difficult problems being solved by young people too ignorant to know that they were impossible.

Robert A. Heinlein:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects.

Henry David Thoreau:

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Thomas Edison:

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing.

Joan Acocella:

Alcohol may also persuade us that we have found the truth about life, a comforting experience rarely available in the sober hour.

Warren Buffett:

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Alan Kay:

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Montesquieu:

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

Seneca:

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Hunter S. Thompson:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.

Richard Feynman:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

There’s no miracle people. It just happens they got interested in this thing, and they learned all this stuff. They’re just people. There’s no talent or special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study. So if you say you take an ordinary person who’s willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics and so on, then he’s become a scientist.

Marcus Aurelius:

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business. (Meditations)

John Carmack:

Focused hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal. Just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren’t sure which way to do something, do it both ways, and see which works better.

A letter to James Van Fleet, from his father:

Stick with it! Persevere… plug along… Be ever watchful, studious, and work hard. Banish from your heart all unhappy memories. After the first year, you will have it easier. When one task is finished, jump into another. Don’t hesitate, and do not falter. Don’t waver, don’t wait, keep on going. Merit begets confidence; confidence begets enthusiasm; enthusiasm conquers the world. You have got the ability to win, and all you need is confidence. My dear son, if you want knowledge, you must toil and work hard for it.

Immanuel Kant:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Tim Ferriss:

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.

Phil Knight:

The things I loved most—books, sports, democracy, free enterprise—started as crazy ideas.

So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.

Robert Caro:

Explore a single individual deeply enough and truths about all individuals emerge.

Gilbert Chesterton:

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and **found no statues of committees.

Hakuun Yasutani:

First of all, you must be convinced you can do so. The conviction creates determination, and the determination zeal. But if you lack conviction, if you think “maybe I can get it, maybe I can’t”, or even worse, “This is beyond me!”—you won’t awaken no matter how much you do zazen.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. (Crime and Punishment)

But how could you live and have no story to tell? (White Nights)

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. (The Brothers Karamazov)

Mike Tyson:

Nothing about me was natural. Only my desire to win was natural. I had a great teacher.

Miguel de Cervantes:

He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.