in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
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Life
in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
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To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you – from the cradle to the grave and beyond – which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist's command. Wake up, wake up – before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don't really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don't reach for the whisky, that won't help you. You've got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
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There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of, to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.
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The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.
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