The challenge of living by ancient rules in a modern world often leads to unexpected insights and new perspectives.

You will lead, you will strike up the march of the future, boys will swear by your name, and thanks to your madness they will no longer need to be mad

Big Truth, once understood and assimilated, always modifies your intent, and invariably leads to personal change

I like suspenseful movies instead of really gory, scary movies because I’m a coward. The suspense genre makes you think.

Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.

The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all.

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.

They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.

Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

To be a textual critic requires aptitude for thinking and willingness to think; and though it also requires other things, those things are supplements and cannot be substitutes. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man’s deceiver
Was never mine.

You must not treat my immortal works as quarries to be used at will by the various hacks whom you may employ to compile anthologies.

To think that two and two are four And neither five nor three The heart of man has long been sore And long ’tis like to be.

I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.

To be a textual critic requires aptitude for thinking and willingness to think; and though it also requires other things, those things are supplements and cannot be substitutes. Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

It is often our best friends who criticize us most severely.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Love is not blind; it simply enables one to see things others fail to see.

There is no joy so great as that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness

Always keep your mind that the very moment when your life may stifle you anyway, then it is the true sign that your life is actually not yours.

To share my experience I would just like to say that life at my age will just seem more or less just like a long march which will be like going to and from the lavatory.

I have always observed that we usually get at least some of the other reward for what we do, just like an appreciation.

When it comes to keeping up your appearance then, I feel that it is the most money intensive one.

I always believe and would also like to tell you that the actual joy of the mysteries is always a certainty, the one which truly always comes or is derived from its actual contemplation.

I feel every person is different with different attitudes I am the kind of person who always takes sympathy just like a normal one.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

Trust and trust alone should lead us to love

Baseball is a journey of a thousand steps, each one as important as the last

In baseball, there’s no such thing as an insurmountable lead or an impossible comeback

The true beauty of baseball is found in its traditions, from the seventh-inning stretch to the crack of the bat

Baseball is a game of strategy and intellect, as much as it is about physical prowess.

The reason why a bad philosophy leads to such hell is that it is what you think and want and treasure and foster in times of preparation that determine what you do in the pinch, and that it takes an error to father a sin.

Baseball is a mirror of life, reflecting our triumphs and failures.

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a baseball hitting a wooden bat

The game begins when you step into the ballpark, and it never really ends.

It’s a simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball

Baseball has experienced and ingested an entire arrangement of disengagements.

There’s nothing awful that comes from baseball

There are many individuals who know me who can’t comprehend for the life of them why I would find a good pace in something as unserious as baseball. If they just knew

All I at any point needed to be was leader of the American League

In thinking about nanotechnology today, what’s most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

A writer’s task is to capture the essence of a moment, to freeze time in the pages of a book

The beauty of literature is that it allows us to experience the world through the eyes of others

In literature, there are no easy answers. It is a space for ambiguity, for questions without clear solutions

The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.

When stuck in the river, it is best to dive and swim to the bank yourself before someone drops a large stone on your chest in an attempt to hoosh you there.

On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, and I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true That who is what and what is who.” – Winnie-the-Pooh

They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.

I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul.

You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.

I was walking along looking for somebody, and then suddenly I wasn’t anymore.

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.

The things that make me different are the things that make me.

If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

How do you spell ‘love’?” – Piglet “You don’t spell it…you feel it.” – Pooh

Derringer, who invented the gun that killed Lincoln, made as much money in lawsuits as he did selling guns

In Yorkshire there is only the impetus of decline; the farms, the woolen mills, the dairy rounds wither, unravel and turn sour. The family wears out, stumbles politely, tripping over drink and ennui and a genteel surrender to the momentum of underachievement.

At the end of the eighteenth century, science was one of the few areas in old Europe where illegitimacy could not overshadow accomplishment

But they also confuse two distinct occupations: cooks and chefs. Cooks do it at home for love. Chefs do it in public for money. Dinner parties are karaoke cheffery.

By 1927, only the richest 2 percent of Americans paid any federal tax at all.

The Swiss—also a federation of semi-independent states—are even more attached to their guns than Texans, and they have a greater number per capita, but death by shooting is so rare they don’t even collate the figures

In the Edwardian way of things, collected indiscriminately and rigorously, with the global kleptomania of empire and the desire to own, calibrate, measure and stuff everything possible, to put all of creation into its place, and place as much of it as possible in glass cases.

The first lift shaft was built four years before the first lift. In 1852 Peter Cooper was constructing the Cooper Union building in New York with an elevator shaft, in the sure and certain knowledge that if he built it, the lift would come. That isn’t an act of impatience, it’s an act of faith, and it is, archetypally, the act of an American.

There is a theory that bravery and intrepidness and extreme risk taking are all sorts of madness, and that only one person in 1,000 or 100,000 is born without the normal safety rail of self-preservation, the pressing need to turn around and go home when it’s dark, cold and frightening.

Europe is, for the most part, a hugger-mugger continent that works best on the consensus of inertia and precedent. Those who have dogmatic and contrarian beliefs can cause disproportionate ructions and ripples in our overcrowded and hierarchical communities

The definition of wit is a joke that doesn’t make you laugh.

The French in particular confuse unadorned direct language with a lack of culture or intellectual elegance

Knowledge acquired outdoors always seems to have a greater, hardier wisdom than the stuff you find at a desk on a computer

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

It is the most complete skin-crawling, silently screaming evocation of hell; the reinforced concrete transubstantiation of sleepless megalomania and hysterical fear

He puts a pot, big enough to boil a small missionary, onto the wide burner and chucks in skeleton segments two-handed.

Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.

There has never yet been a person in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort

Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us… It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

It is better to have it and need it, than to need it and not have it.

The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude… men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get back up when they die.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.

Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.

If whole branches of Jews must be destroyed, it is worth it, as long as a Jewish state in Palestine is created.

Dream and deed are not as different as many think. All the deeds of men are dreams at first, and become dreams in the end.

Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream. Antagonism is essential to man’s greatest efforts.

It goes without saying that the Jewish people can have no other goal than Palestine and that, whatever the fate of the proposition may be, our attitude toward the land of our fathers is and shall remain unchangeable.

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

The most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…

I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!

The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence

Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.

Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest… he took it over the edge..

I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead – and find no one there.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something

The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they’re property.

I like to watch the news, because I don’t like people very much and when you watch the news… If you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you’re right.

A true Zen saying: ‘Nothing is what I want.

God made us. He’s in charge of everything, right? If He didn’t like us, why didn’t he change us?

Buddy puts his nose to the ground and gets things done. He came up the hard way, and nobody gave anything to him. I have lots of respect for him for that

In the old days they, the promoters, wanted more and more from me. They wanted me to jump or spill my blood and break my bones. Every time they wanted me to jump further, and further, and further. Hell, they thought my bike had wings

If I’m out trailriding, I have a favorite motorcycle. Riding on the road, I’ve got a favorite. If I’m jumping, I have a favorite, and if I’m racing, I have a favorite.

Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.

We’re stronger in the places that we’ve been broken.

Everyone behaves badly–given the chance.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

And you’ll always love me won’t you? Yes And the rain won’t make any difference? No

Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

I’m simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

We can choose a path that leads us into trouble. It all comes down to our decisions at the end of the day.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.

The sole means of protecting your solitude is to offend everyone, beginning with those you love.

Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.