“How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 86 of 303
“The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.”
“The cheek Is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.”
“How long a time lies in one little word?”
“Conceit in weakest bodies works the strongest.”
“Action is transitory, a step, a blow, The motion of a muscle, this way or that, 'Tis done--And in the after-vacancy, We wonder at ourselves, like men betrayed.”
“If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible.”
“They have done what they like. Their difficulty is to like what they have done.”
“I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality.”
“There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.”
“I'm not a quester or a searcher for the truth. I don't really think there is one answer, so I never went looking for it. My impulse is less questing and more playful. I like trying on ideas and ways of life and religious approaches. I'm just not a good candidate for conversion.”
“A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.”
“A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.”
“An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.”
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
“A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.”
“There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.”
“Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.”
“On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.”
“It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance.”