Quotes Library

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of true romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. this is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

― William S. Burroughs

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life... 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. Everything else is secondary.

— Steve Jobs

I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and... I believe in miracles.

I'm an introvert... I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.

There's a curious thing about pain or hardship. In the beginning, it's an enemy, it's something that you don't want to face or think about or deal with. Yet, with time, it becomes almost a friend.

— Audrey Hepburn

No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perception and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.

— Ansel Adams

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs on the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

— Apple Computer Inc.

I said to myself, 'I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me'...I decided to start anew― to strip away what I had been taught― to accept as true my own thinking.

― Georgia O'Keeffe

He is outside of everything and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

― Henry James

For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world... and yet to remain hidden from the world― such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.

― Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter Of Modern Life" (1863)

It is in your own power to withdraw into yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind ― the realm of your own.

― Marcus Aurelius

Like many introverts, I was drawn to my field because I loved the learning of it, exploring the mysteries of the mind and its mechanisms, understanding and developing theories to make sense of it all, and applying what I learned to my own psychology...

― Laurie Helgoe

Resistance is experienced as fear, the degree of fear equates the strength of resistance. Therefore, the more we fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise ia important to us and to the growth of our soul.

― Steven Pressfield

Art and artists are very much misunderstood in our culture... Because we have this ethic of purpose and utility, and art is not useful in a direct way. And I think that, also, our concept of artists is that they're lazy somehow and that they don't want to work hard... In fact, what I discovered in working with artists is that most artists, by and large, are not doing it because they want to be the next Andy Warhol ― they're doing it at a huge personal expense and struggling to keep a practice going while trying to figure out how to make ends meet. They're not making art because they want to make money, they make art because they have something to say that they want to share with the world.

―Jen Bekman

I wasn't prepared to assert myself as an independent voice arguing and howling. Here was a society with certain cultural preconceptions about time and cognition and about middle-class principles―and a secular lack of them―and fixed notions about how one hears speech and what the structure of a moment is―and all my ideas, all, were different from those. I didn't want to be famous, I wanted to live.

― Harold Brodkey, The Art of Fiction No. 126

I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

― George Orwell, Why I Write

Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.

― Mike Ditka

For a work to be truly creative, it has to depart from the status quo at some point. That departure makes many people uncomfortable.

― David Burkus

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

― Herodotus

Carry the battle to them. Do not let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive. And don't ever apologize for anything.

― Harry Truman

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

― Marcus Aurelius

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

― Christopher Morley

Something is lost, but something is gained in living everyday.

― Joni Mitchel

You have to choose where you look, and in making the choice, you eliminate entire worlds.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

― Albert Pike

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

― John F. Kennedy

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

― Maya Angelou

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

― Ambrose Redmoon

No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.

If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

― Henry David Thoreau

The whole world and its condition has its counter parts within us. Turn the gap inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.

― Kirsten Zambucka

Let us give it a trial. For all of us, the arrangements, device, and machinery of technology are to a greater or lesser extent indispensable. It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices; they even challenge us to ever greater advances. But suddenly and unaware we find ourselves so firmly shackled to these technical devices that we fall into bondage to them.

Still one can act otherwise. We can use technical devices and yet with proper use also keep ourselves free of them, that we may let go of them any time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.

― Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking

Inside myself is a place where I live alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.

― Pearl S. Buck

I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed.

― Katie McGarry

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

― Charles Dickens

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.

—	Pater, Walter

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

— Blaise Pascal

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

— Leo C. Rosten

It is easier to do one’s duty to others than to one’s self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

— Thomas Szaz

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

— Pearl S. Buck

There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.

— Miguel de Cervantes

You strike me as a kind person. I hope your world is kind. By which I mean, I’ve heard we see the world not as it is but as we are. A saint sees a world of saints, a killer sees only murderers and victims.

— Neil Gaiman

The sea: I didn’t lose myself in it; I found myself in it.

— Albert Camus

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

— Blaise Pascal

Some people put walls up, not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down.

— Socrates

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

— Vincent van Gogh

The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.

— Albert Einstein

In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.

— Albert Schweitzer

People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not all those who wander are lost.

— J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve always found that the most beautiful people, truly beautiful inside and out, are the ones who are quietly unaware of their effect.

— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

— Henry David Thoreau

I suppose everyone feels like that from time to time. We all want revenge. We’ve all been hurt one way or another. But the best thing to do is keep on going as if none of it matters.

— Natsuo Kirino

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your Creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

— B. Whitford

I will never apologize for being me, but I will apologize for the times that I am not.

— M. Carini

Either I will find a way or make one.

— P. Sidney

I dwell in possibility

— Emily Dickinson

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

— J. Campbell

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

— Socrates

The soul that is within me no man can denigrade.

— F. Douglass

The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet.

— Aristotle

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

— A. Camus

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosened upon this world

— A. Camus

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