Tolerable Quotes

• When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

  Anais Nin

  Being Yourself, Tolerance, World

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• Even the worst feeling, with time and familiarity, became tolerable.

  Caragh M. O'Brien

  Feelings, Worst, Familiarity

  Caragh M. O'Brien (2011). “Birthmarked”, p.26, Simon and Schuster

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• The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.

  Plato

  Men

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• She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

  Jane Austen

  Pride, Men, Giving

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.9

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• What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Inspiring, Peace

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

  Adam Smith

  Peace, Justice, Littles

  Adam Smith, comte Germain Garnier, Dugald Stewart (1835). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.96

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• I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Inspirational, Freedom, Responsibility

  "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein, (Ch. 6), 1966.

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• I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Freedom, Mistress, Being Free

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, p.73, Hachette UK

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• Fire is the most tolerable third party

  Henry David Thoreau

  Party, Fire, Third Parties

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.171, Yale University Press

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• Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Would Be, Amusement

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• I wish you a tolerable Thursday. That's all any of us can hope for.

  April Winchell

  Wish, Thursday, Wish You

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• Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable.

  Aleister Crowley

  Love Is, Principles

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• Self-knowledge is an anchor that makes unpredictability tolerable.

  Deepak Chopra

  Self, Anchors, Unpredictability

  Deepak Chopra (1997). “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old”, Random House Large Print Publishing

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• This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.

  Albert Camus

  Moon, World, Needs

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• It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed . . . to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that "leisure" time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is its subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work.

  Spider Robinson

  Fun, Smart, Hard Work

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• There is a wide world out there, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth and the latter makes the journey tolerable.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Pain, Journey, Joy

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• Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.

  Harriet Lerner

  Emotional, Issues, Important

  Harriet Lerner (2009). “The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.

  Michel Foucault

  Mask, Ability, Conditions

  Michel Foucault (2012). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, p.86, Vintage

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• It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

  Robert Hass

  Writing, Poetry, Hell

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• Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has ''cast up'' in my time or is like to -- this art by which even the ''poor'' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Photography, Country, Art

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• For a man who finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself, it is natural to be satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others. There are few demands to be met, and no commitment is required. Marriage, on the other hand, closes the door. Your existence is confined to a narrow space in which you are constantly forced to reveal yourself – and therefore, constantly obliged to look into yourself, to examine your own depths.

  Paul Auster

  Commitment, Space, Offering

  Paul Auster (2011). “Collected Prose”, p.17, Faber & Faber

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• The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in.

  Doris Lessing

  Stars, Men, Filled Up

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• It is the history of our kindnesses that alone make this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters . . . I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Kindness, Thinking, Looks

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• You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sacrifice, Men, Things In Life

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• It's a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds

  Charlaine Harris

  Mind, Comment, Humans

  Charlaine Harris (2006). “Definitely Dead: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.173, Penguin

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