"The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief."

Butler, Samuel on crime and criminals   

"Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it."

Genet, Jean on crime and criminals   

"It is because they took the easy way out that rivers, and people, go crooked."

Peterson, Jill on crime and criminals   

"Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them."

Stone, W. Clement on choice
7 fans of this quote   

"Anything inside that immobilizes me, gets in my way, keeps me from my goals, is all mine."

Dyer, Wayne on choice
3 fans of this quote   

"I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient."

Dyer, Wayne on growth
3 fans of this quote   

"As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind."

Dyer, Wayne on mind
8 fans of this quote   

"Only the insecure strive for security."

Dyer, Wayne on security
6 fans of this quote   

"Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on security   

"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."

Newton, Sir Isaac on imagination
3 fans of this quote   

"It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome K. Jerome It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth. and so it goes away. Puzzling."

Pirsig, Robert M. on truth   

"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!"

Williams, Tennessee on hypocrisy
11 fans of this quote   

"I have just about all I can take of myself."

Behrman, S. on self-respect
7 fans of this quote   

"Organization is the enemy of improvisation."

Unknown, Source on organization
3 fans of this quote   

"We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us."

Trilling, Lionel on liberals   

"Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood."

Trilling, Lionel on obscurity
6 fans of this quote   

"The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary."

Miller, Henry on obscurity   

"The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure."

Miller, Henry on failure
4 fans of this quote   

"The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble."

Miller, Henry on insecurity
4 fans of this quote   

"However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on failure
8 fans of this quote   

"It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny."

Cooper, James F. on public opinion   

"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity."

Cooper, James F. on democracy   

"Let the people think they govern and they will be governed."

Penn, William on democracy   

"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."

Penn, William on truth
3 fans of this quote   

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."

Gaulle, Charles De on authority
4 fans of this quote   

"I respect only those who resist me; but I cannot tolerate them."

Gaulle, Charles De on opposition
3 fans of this quote   

"They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar."

Stevens, Wallace on music   

"Good and bad men are less than they seem."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on goodness
4 fans of this quote   

"Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die."

Carlyle, Thomas on goodness
3 fans of this quote   

"The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it."

Mill, John Stuart on self-respect   

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference."

Didion, Joan on self-respect   

"Character is much easier kept than recovered."

Paine, Thomas on character   

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"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."

Paine, Thomas on value
4 fans of this quote   

"Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish."

Saying on law and lawyers   

"The weakness of an enemy forms part of our own strength."

Saying on competition   

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

Service, Robert W. on challenges
10 fans of this quote   

"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas."

Einstein, Albert on endurance
25 fans of this quote   

"Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us."

Bacon, Francis on humankind
7 fans of this quote   

"It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist."

Chardin, Pierre Teilhard De on possibilities   

"Duty cannot exist without faith."

Disraeli, Benjamin on duty
3 fans of this quote   

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