"Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves."

Huxley, Aldous on individuality   

"Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself."

Jung, Carl on individuality
4 fans of this quote   

"Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb."

Lapham, Lewis H. on individuality   

"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."

Mill, John Stuart on individuality
4 fans of this quote   

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"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."

Picasso, Pablo on individuality
5 fans of this quote   

"A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature."

Seneca on individuality   

"Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do -- can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do."

Sher, Barbara on individuality
6 fans of this quote   

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality."

Wilde, Oscar on individuality
9 fans of this quote   

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

Einstein, Albert on nature
39 fans of this quote   

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."

Ellison, Harlan on stupidity
3 fans of this quote   

"Words are alive; cut them and they bleed."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on words
41 fans of this quote   

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."

Hubbard, Elbert on stupidity
9 fans of this quote   

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."

O'Rourke, P. J. on free will   

"The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?"

Sade, Marquis De on imagination   

"All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Einstein, Albert on change
15 fans of this quote   

"You have to accept the fact that part of the sizzle of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered."

Paglia, Camille on sex
9 fans of this quote   

"To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents."

Tuchman, Barbara on libraries   

"My library was dukedom large enough."

Shakespeare, William on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"

Ruskin, John on libraries   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The words of the world want to make sentences."

Bachelard, Gaston on words
27 fans of this quote   

"A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows."

Beecher, Henry Ward on libraries   

"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one."

Birrell, Augustine on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"The true university of these days is a collection of books."

Carlyle, Thomas on libraries
5 fans of this quote   

"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life."

Cousins, Norman on libraries
3 fans of this quote   

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it."

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan on libraries   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A man's library is a sort of harem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries
5 fans of this quote   

"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on libraries   

"Your library is your paradise."

Erasmus, Desiderius on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed."

Greer, Germaine on libraries   

"A library implies an act of faith."

Hugo, Victor on libraries   

"The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought."

Irving, Washington on libraries   

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."

Johnson, Samuel on libraries
3 fans of this quote   

"It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on libraries   

"What is more important in a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists."

Macleish, Archibald on libraries   

"Some on commission, some for the love of learning, some because they have nothing better to do or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears."

Macneice, Louis on libraries   

"My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

Malcolm X on libraries
7 fans of this quote   

"The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history."

Rowan, Carl on libraries
4 fans of this quote   

"Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last."

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley on libraries   

"I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander."

Smith, Alexander on libraries
3 fans of this quote