Favorite Quotes

Joe Kalicki

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Because we should have a thread for these after all.

This one is from Getting Even, a collection of Woody Allen humor essays that is maybe the funniest book I've ever read.

"Italy reminded me a great deal of Chicago, particularly Venice, because both cities have canals and the streets abound with statues and cathedrals by the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance."
 
There are only two quotes that have ever had anything resembling a profound effect on my outlook and perspective on life.

"We are each our own Devil, and we make this world our Hell"

Oscar Wilde

And technically, this one's a lyric, but I take it as a quote anyway.

"Now the royal flames of Pompeii bless all our senses"

The Flaming Lips
 
I have an extremely long list on my Facebook profile, but my favourite ones are:

"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, they should believe in themself."
~ Ferris Bueller

"Parting a soup is not a miracle, Bruce. It's a magic trick. A single mom who's working two jobs, and still finds time to take her son to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says "no" to drugs and "yes" to an education, that's a miracle. People want me to do everything for them. What they don't realize is *they* have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle."
~ God, 'Bruce Almighty'

"When a movie character is really working, we become that character."
~ Roger Ebert

"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right." - Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
 
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Mentioned in another thread but "So do the proud men die. Crucified not on a cross of gold, but a stake of humble tin" Very powerful quote from Goblin's death.
 
Forget who says this.
"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
 
"Life is too important to be taken seriously." - Oscar Wilde

"Always love your enemies - Nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

"Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream." - Oscar Wilde

"Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken" - Oscar Wilde

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what world calls a romance." - Oscar Wilde

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up." - Oscar Wilde

"Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life." -Rorshach (Alan Moore)

"What's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 
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"Writing is the only socially acceptable form of Schizophrenia." ~E.L. Doctorow


"People hear that I am a horror writer and they think that I must be a monster, but actually I have the heart of a small child - I keep it in a jar on my desk." ~Robert Bloch


"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." ~Jorge Luis Borges


If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insiduously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to seperate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn


Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
...
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
~William Shakespeare


"It is better to be alone than in bad company." ~George Washington


"It's not that I'm so smart, I just stay with problems longer." ~Albert Einstein


"My life is my message." ~Mahatma Ganhi


"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." ~Ernest Hemingway


"Humor is also a way of saying something serious." ~T. S. Eliot


"If a 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


"Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that have one." ~Lord Chsterfield

"It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them." ~Adlai Stevenson
 
i actually love all those quotes, especially your sig quote.
Thank you. The Groucho Marx quote is one I actually had on a T-shirt at one time. It pretty much sums up my view of television. Which reminds me, it's time to change it again. :D

A few more, and then I'll stop and leave room for other people's posts:




"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." ~Albert Einstein


"I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." ~ Groucho Marx


"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." ~Jack London


A bit lengthy, but probably my favorite Biblical quote:

I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
~Wisdom 7:7-11​
 
Some quotes from Philip K. Dick:

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane." - Philip K. Dick, VALIS

"Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing." - Philip K. Dick

"This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance." - Philip K. Dick

"One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for here philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.'" - Philip K. Dick

And this quote, which isn't at all insightful or inspiring, it's just damn cool:

"My people have said, the wisest, most knowing
And best of them, that my duty was to go to the Danes'
Great king. They have seen my strength for themselves,
Have watched me rise from the darkness of war,
Dripping with my enemies' blood. I drove
Five great giants into chains, chased
All of that race from the earth. I swam
In the blackness of night, hunting monsters
Out of the ocean, and killing them one
By one; death was my errand and the fate
They had earned. Now Grendel and I are called
Together, and I've come." - Beowulf
 
I look forward to reading more of Dick's stories. Those first three quotes are great, but I part ways from him on the fourth one.
I know what you mean. It's really indicative of how obsessed he was with finding out the true nature of reality, despite the fact that there likely is no such thing as the "true nature" of reality.

For more on this subject, read my long-*** paper about VALIS.
 
I know what you mean. It's really indicative of how obsessed he was with finding out the true nature of reality, despite the fact that there likely is no such thing as the "true nature" of reality.

For more on this subject, read my long-*** paper about VALIS.

:shock:

I only read up until the part about Elijah, because I'd like to read VALIS for myself, but..... good GOD. I'd never heard about those paradigm shifts before. The Strawberry Fields Forever bit is enough to re-enforce my belief system in what would have been moments of doubt for years to come.
 
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying." - Woody Allen

"Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." - Winston Churchill
 
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I've got a couple more gems:

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Winston Churchill

"Capitalization is the difference between 'Helping your friend Jack off a horse' and 'Helping your friend jack off a horse'."
- I think this was my friend's English teacher

And on the Twain side of things:

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."
- Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

^Trying to decide if this is true or not is a persistent mental excercise for me

"I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times-- in fact I amount to that myself."
- Mark Twain, Letter to Olivia Clemens, 7/17/1889

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
- Mark Twain, What is Man?
 

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