“You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 769 of 4756
“When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.”
“Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.”
“There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.”
“There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.”
“All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.”
“Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.”
“I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.”
“There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.”
“The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.”
“The worst thing that can happen is when you have gone weeks and months into elaborate sequences and the storyline of the film changes and you find out they don't need it. Sometimes you don't shoot those sequences, or they have been shot and then get edited out of the sequence you've shot gets changed and needs to be redone. That can be hard. It's not heartbreaking, but you do tend to think, "Och, all that work and effort." But that's filming, you know? You put all of these modular things into the pot, and sometimes they don't all get used.”
“I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.”
“What is one man among so many men? What are so many men in such a world? Can one man think one thing and think it long? Can one man be one thing and be it long?”
“The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He wears the words he reads to look upon Within his being.”
“One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees, crusted with snow, And have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers, shagged with ice, the spruces, rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land, full of the same wind, blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing herself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.”
“People look at me in many ways. They've said, 'The guy has no regard for money.' That is not true. I have had regard for money. It depends on who's saying that. Some people worship money as something you've got to have piled up in a big pile somewhere. I've only thought about money in one way, and that is to do something with it. I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it. I don't even want the dividends from the stock in the studio, because the government's going to take it away. I'd rather have that in (the company) working.”
“Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)”
“There's no doubt that I've deserved my enemies, but I don't think I've deserved my friends.”
“My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them”
“Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.”