Essentials quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside essentials — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Believe it or not, I'm a big fan of patchouli oil. I know it's not a universally liked fragrance. I usually combine it with other essential oils - I have many mixtures I like."
"The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet."
"A public option is essential to creating the cost-savings necessary to offset the cost of providing all Americans access to affordable health care."
"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers."
"I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition."
"Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague."
"We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small."
"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."
"If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential."
"Knowledge without practice is useless. Practice without knowledge is dangerous."
"And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!"
"This body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it. It is extraordinary how it likes being indulged."
"How many understand that Nature is the essential character of whatever is. It's something you'll find by looking not at, but in, always in. It's always inside the thing, and it makes the outside. And some day, when you get sufficiently proficient in understanding the use of the term, you can tell by the outside pretty much from what's inside."
"On some level we trade passion for security, that's trading one illusion for another. It's a matter of degree. We can't live in constant fear, but we can't live without any. The fear of loss is essential to love."
"A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine."
"The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need."
"Preparing for battle, plans were essential. But once the battle was joined, plans were useless."
"Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness."
"You can wear black in any moment of the day, no matter your age. You can wear black with almost any occasion. A black dress is essential for every woman."
"Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible."
