"Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding. If his own prowess fails to compare with theirs, at least it has an air of greatness about it. He should behave like those archers who, if they are skilful, when the target seems too distant, know the capabilities of their bow and aim a good deal higher than their objective, not in order to shoot so high but so that by aiming high they can reach the target."

Machiavelli, Niccolo on imitation
3 fans of this quote   

"The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous."

Machiavelli, Niccolo on virtue
3 fans of this quote   

"If one finds the strength to deal with small things, one finds it to deal with the large ones as well. "

Hillesum, Etty on creativity
4 fans of this quote   

"I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed. "

Hillesum, Etty on creativity   

"Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love."

Bernard, St. on love
82 fans of this quote   

"Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn."

Vidal, Gore on style
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"Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day."

Martial, Marcus Valerius on individuality
3 fans of this quote   

"Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!"

Jong, Erica on women   

"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on death
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"Women are considered deep -- why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on women
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"Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet. "

Thoreau, Henry David on uncategorised   

"Words are loaded pistols."

Sartre, Jean-Paul on words
4 fans of this quote   

"No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."

Adams, Henry Brooks on words
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"I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company."

Bachelard, Gaston on words
7 fans of this quote   

"We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look."

Huxley, Aldous on tragedies
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"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."

Eliot, T. S. on writers and writing
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"The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born."

Adler, Renata on writers and writing
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"Men are motivated and empowered when they feel needed. Women are motivated and empowered when they feel cherished."

Gray, John on women
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"The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever -- in short, to be the bohemian."

Wolfe, Thomas on bohemia   

"Remember tonight.. for it is the beginning of always."

Unknown, Source on beginning
6 fans of this quote   

"Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read."

Bacon, Francis on age and aging
12 fans of this quote   

"Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it, everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, never... never forget it."

Judalet, Curtis on love
14 fans of this quote   

"True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen."

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De on love
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart."

Irving, Washington on love
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"Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge."

Levine, Stephen on love
5 fans of this quote   

"There is no living with thee, nor without thee."

Martial, Marcus Valerius on love
3 fans of this quote   

"Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd."

Aragon, Louis on love
24 fans of this quote   

"Love is the beauty of the soul."

Augustine, St. on love
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"There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

Kundera, Milan on passion
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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."

Kundera, Milan on the future
7 fans of this quote   

"Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?"

Foster, John W. on economy and economics   

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered."

Thoreau, Henry David on books - reading   

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us."

Auden, W. H. on books - reading
17 fans of this quote   

"Getting to know someone is like investigating a crime scene where the culprit is constantly allowed to rearrange the evidence. "

Mithani, Adnan on acquaintance   

"Star friendship.— We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did—and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,—perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us! That we have to become estranged is the law above us: by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other! And thus the memory of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on friends and friendship   

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time."

Lubbock, Sir John on rest
3 fans of this quote   

"No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first."

Pavese, Cesare on love
4 fans of this quote   

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."

Gogh, Vincent Van on achievement
81 fans of this quote   

"For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on action
5 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on achievement
191 fans of this quote