“Sometimes looking so hard can make one blind.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 101 of 303
“It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.”
“I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind.”
“I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women... women tend to eat less... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing.”
“What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.”
“The cynicism that you have is not your real soul.”
“You know, growing up my - you know, I came from Compton, Calif., and, you know, it was a place where a lot of people did come out when a lot of people stayed. So I've been able to see the top and the bottom of life, and I think that balances you if you allow it to and if you remember where you came from.”
“If we say a little it is easy to add, but having said too much it is hard to withdraw and never can it be done so quickly as to hinder the harm of our success.”
“I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.”
“Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings.”
“My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.”
“All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.”
“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
“Great men are sincere.”
“Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.”
“A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.”
“Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.”
“By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.”
“Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.”
“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of falsehood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependent by interest, and the friend by tenderness: those who are neither servile nor timorous are yet desirous to bestow pleasure; and, while unjust demands of praise continue to be made, there will always be some whom hope, fear, or kindness will dispose to pay them.”