sirchaint’s most recent Quotables

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.

Some people are so busy learning the tricks of the trade that they never learn the trade.

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

I didn't fall, I attacked the floor.

Orders must not be easy to understand. They must be impossible to misunderstand.

The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin, the greater the adventure).

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Doing what you like is freedom; liking what you do is happiness.

I don’t want to get too comfortable; I’d rather stay hungry.

Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.

Jeder Tag ist ein neues Leben, jedes Aufwachen und Aufstehen eine kleine Geburt, jeder frische Morgen ist eine kleine Jugend und jedes Zubettgehen und Einschlafen ein kleiner Tod.

It is not a measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Die Dauer des menschlichen Lebens ist ein Augenblick, das Wesen ein beständiger Strom, die Empfindung eine dunkle Erscheinung, der Leib eine verwesliche Masse, die Seele ein Kreisel, das Schicksal ein Rätsel, der Ruf etwas Unentschiedenes. Kurz, was den Körper betrifft, ist ein schneller Fluß, was die Seele angeht, Träume und Dunst, das Leben ist ein Krieg, eine Haltestelle für Reisende, der Nachruhm ist Vergessenheit.

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.

Keine geringe Kunst ist schlafen: es tut schon not, den ganzen Tag daraufhin zu wachen.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.