“You know, sometimes I'll go to an 8th-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just 8th grade ... An 8th-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 38 of 303
“Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.”
“As you get older, your mind gets a little more set. And it needs the poking and prodding and breaking through of stereotypes that I think young people provide.”
“Respect gods before demigods, heroes before men, and first among men your parents; but respect yourself most of all.”
“Reputation is like fine china: Once broken it's very hard to repair.”
“Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.”
“Most people never listen.”
“Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.”
“The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.”
“As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.”
“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.”
“The vow that binds too quickly snaps itself.”
“Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltiness of time.”
“When we accept any discipline for ourselves, we try to avoid everything except that which is necessary for our purpose; it is this purposefulness, which belongs to the adult mind, that we force upon school children. We say, "Never keep your mind aler.”
“A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.”
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.”
“My name is immaterial,' she said. That's a pretty name,' said Rincewind.”
“What can we say with certainty?”
“Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous.”
“Everyone has a story, and the story changes, and the more I can root into the truth of things - it's so hard - I don't think anyone ever really puts it all together. But somewhere along the way it all became fused.”