“A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 174 of 303
“Physiological expenditure is a superficial way of self-expression. People who incline toward physical love accomplish nothing at all.”
“Do not strive to be a modern artist: it's the one thing, unfortunately, you can't help being.”
“What do I believe? I do not know; I do not know; I do not know.”
“An oath is a promise-and a promise can be made regardless of feeling.”
“Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.”
“Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.”
“When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's The Ox Bow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross that defines what kind of drama it is.”
“Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?”
“Never compare one person with another: comparisons are odious.”
“Never exaggerate, but express your feelings with moderation.”
“People only become writers if they can't find the one book they've always wanted to read.”
“It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.”
“Rings try to find their way back to their owner. Someone ought to write a book about it.”
“Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-" "And, adding it all up...?" "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.”
“You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.”
“You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive. You say you're seventeen?..How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can't get over it.”
“My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.”
“I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground. Possibly something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for nothing.”
“It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.”