"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other."

Sontag, Susan on bores and boredom
3 fans of this quote   

"Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many."

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) on writers and writing   

"Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself."

Levenson, Samuel on happiness
3 fans of this quote   

"No one does anything from a single motive."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on motivation
4 fans of this quote   

"The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such."

Maurois, Andre on leadership   

"Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, and thou art wedded to calamity."

Shakespeare, William on misfortunes   

"The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws."

Gourmont, Remy De on criticism   

"The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over."

Miller, Henry on prison
3 fans of this quote   

"Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics."

Jung, Carl on masses   

"Neurophysiologists will not likely find what they are looking for, for that which they are looking for is that which is looking."

Floyd, Keith on science   

"I am as my creator made me and since He is satisfied, so am I."

Smith, Minnie on self-esteem
3 fans of this quote   

"Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't --it's human."

Erasmus, Desiderius on nature
4 fans of this quote   

"Insanity in individuals is something rare -- but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on insanity
15 fans of this quote   

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

Russell, Bertrand on happiness
3 fans of this quote   

"The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational."

Wilson, A. N. on logic
5 fans of this quote   

"Writers are always selling somebody out."

Didion, Joan on writers and writing   

"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are."

Burroughs, John on opportunity   

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Welles, Orson on isolation
30 fans of this quote   

"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."

Roosevelt, Eleanor on curiosity
8 fans of this quote   

"Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads."

Chesterfield, Lord on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it."

Mencken, H. L. on pleasure   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."

Frost, Robert on secrets
8 fans of this quote   

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

Einstein, Albert on teacher
11 fans of this quote   

"Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise can draw in their senses at will."

Bhagavad Gita on choice
7 fans of this quote   

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."

Fromm, Erich on uncertainty
6 fans of this quote   

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."

Hugo, Victor on idleness
4 fans of this quote   

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

Thoreau, Henry David on knowledge
6 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"God is only a great imaginative experience."

Lawrence, D. H. on god
3 fans of this quote   

"No, I don't understand my husband's theory of relativity, but I know my husband, and I know he can be trusted."

Einstein, Elsa on trust
6 fans of this quote   

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."

Shaw, George Bernard on indifference
10 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions."

Einstein, Albert on action
3 fans of this quote   

"Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout."

James, William on facts   

"Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think."

Smith, Dr. Walter on writers and writing   

"In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people."

Maurois, Andre on literature   

"It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them."

Storr, Anthony on relationship
8 fans of this quote   

"You are only what you are when no one is looking."

Edwards, Robert C. on appearance
17 fans of this quote   

"It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice."

Epictetus on choice
5 fans of this quote   

"Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle."

Melbourne, Lord on principles
4 fans of this quote   

"The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it."

Garafola, Frank M. on intelligence and intellectuals
11 fans of this quote   

"We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see."

Peguy, Charles on perception
5 fans of this quote