Masters Quotes - Page 16

• There's not a business or a master plan as far as I'm concerned. I take it week by week, and I don't think you ever expect to be able to do the next thing.

  Lauren Conrad

  Thinking, Able, Next

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• Master of the universe but not of myself, I am the only rebel against my absolute power.

  Pierre Corneille

  Rebel, Awareness, Absolute Power

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• It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Art, Children, Practice

  "Easy does it" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. January 01, 2005.

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• The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thank You, Thankful, Gratitude

  "Reflections on the Human Condition" by Eric Hoffer, (Section 172), 1973.

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• Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “A Mortal Antipathy”, p.246, Reprint Services Corporation

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• Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Men, Thinking

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (1911). “From Day to Day with Holmes”

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• I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Passion, Equality, Envy

  "Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Harold J. Laski, 1916 - 1935". Book by Mark De Wolfe Howe, Volume 2, p. 942, 1953.

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• To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Mean, Ideas, Moral

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• I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

  Edward Hopper

  Believe, Records, Emotion

  Edward Hopper, Adam D. Weinberg, Richard R. Brettell, Whitney Museum of American Art (1993). “Hopper in Paris: June 23-September 19, 1993, collection in context”

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• A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

  Victor Hugo

  Slave Owners, Debtors, Dignity

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• I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Hate, Men, Slave

  Nawal El Saadawi (2007). “Woman at Point Zero: Second Edition”, p.104, Zed Books

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• People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, People, Political

  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 17 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

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• Purity in body and heart May please some--as for me, I make no boast. For, as you know, no master of a household Has all of his utensils made of gold; Some are wood, and yet they are of use.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Heart, Gold, Use

  Geoffrey Chaucer, David Wright (1998). “The Canterbury Tales”, p.152, Oxford University Press, USA

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• People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Liars, Lying

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.657, Hamilton Books

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• What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Sleep, Eye, Thinking

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• Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Stars, Fate

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 134

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• The Ogre does what ogres can,
  Deeds quite impossible for Man,
  But one prize is beyond his reach,
  The Ogre cannot master Speech:
  About a subjugated plain,
  Among its desperate and slain,
  The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
  While drivel gushes from his lips.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Hands, Doe

  "August 1968". Poem by W. H. Auden,

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• When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.

  Lewis Carroll

  Mean, Different, Wonderland

  1871 Through the Looking-Glass, ch.6,'Humpty Dumpty'.

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• I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

  Albert Camus

  Struggle, Heart, Night

  Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942)

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• But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Lying, Years, Creative

  Emily Bronte, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë (1851). “Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey: In Two Volumes”, p.19

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• At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work.

  Eric Clapton

  Men, Play, Listening

  Eric Clapton (2007). “Clapton: The Autobiography”, Broadway

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• Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

  Winston Churchill

  Peace, Military, War

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Beautiful, Book, Greek

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation”

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• Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical. When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhism, Hands, Knives

  Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.29, New World Library

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• Never let me lose the marvel of your statue-like eyes, or the accent the solitary rose of your breath places on my cheek at night. I am afraid of being, on this shore, a branchless trunk, and what I most regret is having no flower, pulp, or clay for the worm of my despair. If you are my hidden treasure, if you are my cross, my dampened pain, if I am a dog, and you alone my master, never let me lose what I have gained, and adorn the branches of your river with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Dog, Pain, Regret

  Federico García Lorca, “Sonnet Of The Sweet Complaint”

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