Giving quotes
21.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us."
"One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around."
"Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises."
"My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather."
"I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas."
"A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts."
"So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality [entelechy] of anatural organized body."
"What I'm doing is the thing I want to do. I don't care what other people think. I still will be a bodybuilder. I love it. I love the feeling in my muscles, I love the competition, and I love the things it gives me."
"It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."
"In some ways, blogging is like drinking - it gives a person permission to be a total asshole."
"What do I "think" of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think."
"Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame."
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error."
"I am not a bloody ghoda running a race that you give me a tag. I am competitive, and the reason for that is that I want to do the best films."
"Cachao is obviously Cuban. He's known for traditional Cuban music and that's the music that I'm most passionate about. Cachao is one of the greatest innovators and visionaries. At the base of the tree, the roots, there is Cachao. So I was blessed to have had that time to learn from him and to give him an opportunity and a space where he can create. Everybody always wants to play with Cachao, because he's the guy."
"We can take more time and interest, and give more attention to our personal health than a hired professional can. We have learned to go get medical help, not to give it. We have learned to relay our body's needs to another, not to provide them ourselves."
"I don't think even when you find a person, you can be completely honest, ever. There's still pieces of you that you don't give away. I do believe you always need that place where it's just you, your thoughts, no one else's judgment or anything."
"I've learned that one of my greatest secrets is scheduling downtime into a busy schedule. This gives me the time to have quality moments with my husband and son, who both recharge my spirit in ways I never imagined."
"Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind."
"Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw."
