Quotes

Some favourite quotes below. I’ve only recently started to migrate quotes over but I hope to add more.

• There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

• Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty.

• A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

• Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

• This is a game. You ask for or state or express what you want, and then you either get it or you don’t. Whether you get it or not doesn’t really matter, what matters is you don’t flinch.

• You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.

• Nothing is more scandalous than a man that is proud of his humility.

• It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love.

• Plants such as peonies, azaleas and camellias will be able to produce beautiful flowers, end of the world or not. If men would give some thought to this fact, they would understand. And if people took notice of the masters of even these times, they would be able to say that there are masters in the various arts. But people become imbued with the idea that the world has come to an end and no longer put forth any effort. This is a shame. There is no fault in the times.

• When someone is giving you his opinion, you should receive it with deep gratitude even though it is worthless.

• At first it is an oppressive thing to run until one is breathless. But it is an extraordinarily good feeling when one is standing around after the running. More than that, it is even better to sit down. More than that, it is even better to lie down. And more than that, to put down a pillow and sleep soundly is even better. A man’s whole life should be like this. To exert oneself to a great extent when one is young and then to sleep when he is old or at the point of death is the way it should be. But to first sleep and then exert oneself.

• With an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths.

• If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day.

• Something that is not done at that time and at that place will remain unfinished for a lifetime.

• A person who becomes fatigued when unhappy is useless.

• You got one life, so do it all.

• The greats never sacrifice the important for the urgent.