“A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-destructive behavior by not subsidizing people who live irresponsibly and make poor choices.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 73 of 303
“If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
“Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you.”
“Listen to me, don't listen to me. Talk to me, don't talk to me.”
“The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.”
“I think when you don't know where you stand with someone, they can surprise you in their goodness and their badness, and that makes them human.”
“As soon as you try to describe a close friendship, it loses something.”
“We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.”
“Why don't you have a room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful-a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens?”
“If I make a mark in time, I can't say the mark is mine.”
“In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.”
“The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries.”
“... I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.”
“I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.”
“If people tell you what you really don't want to hear what's unpleasant-there's an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it.”
“Only those with no memory insist on their originality.”
“I think that what's happening today, with all the young poets rushing from one college to another, lecturing at the drop of a hat and so on, is not too good; I think it might have a bad effect on a great many of the young poets. They - to quote Mark Twain - "swap juices" a little too much, so that they are in danger of losing their own identity and don't give themselves time enough in which to work out what's really of importance to them - they're too busy.”
“John was closest of all to Paul; their relationship was very complex.”
“People are not good at expressing their frustration. The best way to listen to the customer is through metrics.”
“I think midlife crisis is just a point where people's careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships.”