Essayists Quotes - Page 3

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Novelists, Would Be, Pace

Elizabeth Gilbert (2013). “The Signature of All Things”, p.211, A&C Black

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To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.

Barry Lopez

Nature, Hands, Rivers

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All paths cause pain, so to chose the safe over the audacious will not give you less pain, only less beauty.

Michael Ventura

Beauty, Pain, Giving

Michael Ventura (1994). “The Zoo where You're Fed to God: A Novel”, Simon & Schuster

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There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

Washington Irving

Strength, Sad, Sympathy

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The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

Karl Kraus

Funny, Clever, Stupid

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All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.

Clive James

Movie, Effort, Hollywood

Clive James (1985). “Flying Visits”

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There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there.

N. Scott Momaday

Travel, Memories, Eye

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I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget.

Arthur Miller

Art, Jobs, Thinking

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To exist is to defy all that threatens you. To be a rebel is not to accumulate a library of subversive books or to dream of fantastic conspiracies or of taking to the hills. It is to make yourself your own law. To find in yourself what counts. To make sure that you’re never “cured” of your youth. To prefer to put everyone up against the wall rather than to remain supine. To pillage whatever can be converted to your law, without concern for appearance.

Dominique Venner

Inspirational, Life, Dream

"The Rebel: An Interview with Dominique Venner". www.counter-currents.com. June 29, 2010.

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I find that white people in general, including white liberals and even revolutionaries, are most inclined to call you a racist when they don't want to confront the ugly realities that their racism has created. In their eyes, when you attempt to address those realities from your perspective you become a racist.

Runoko Rashidi

Eye, Reality, White

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As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

Natalia Ginzburg

Love, Success, Education

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We must use what we have to invent what we desire.

Adrienne Rich

Success, Dream, Use It Or Lose It

Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.172, W. W. Norton & Company

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The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.

Oscar Wilde

Inspirational, Spiritual, Soul

Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.168, Courier Corporation

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Every moment is a new beginning.

Elie Wiesel

Inspirational, Positive, New Beginnings

Elie Wiesel (2012). “Open Heart”, p.75, Schocken

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Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

August Strindberg

Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

Mark Strand

Life, Thinking, Pay

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Nothing becomes reality in the political life of a nation that was not present in its literature as spirit.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Life, Reality, Political

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Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.

Dejan Stojanovic

Lying, Knights, Knighthood

"The Sun Watches the Sun". Book by Dejan Stojanovic, "Eternity and Eternity" (p. 32), 1999.

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People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Richard Grenier

Strength, Wisdom, Veterans Day

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We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anais Nin

Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Inspirational, Life, Positive

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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

Friendship, Happiness, Happy

Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

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Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

C. S. Lewis

Courage, Army, Bravery

In Cyril Connolly 'The Unquiet Grave' (1944) ch. 31

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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

C. S. Lewis

Friendship, Best Friend, Relationship

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The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

Inspirational, Success, Respect

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