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Other Side Quotes and Quotations
 You always admire what you really don't understand.  What you can't get is just what suits you. The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only reality. The true exercise of freedom is-can-nily and wisely and with grace-to move inside what space confines-and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted. Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them! No one is content with his own lot. - Horace Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views. To have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals. There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present. Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age. - Ausonius We love in others what we lack ourselves, and would be everything but what we are. There is less in this than meets the eye. When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death. Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best, and he answered, "Somebody else's." The apples on the other side of the wall are the sweetest. Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. Happiness is ... usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. Acorns were good till bread was found. None of us is ever satisfied with what we are. - Terence We always long for forbidden things, k and desire what is denied us. Man's heart is never satisfied; the snake would swallow the elephant. We all envy other people's luck. When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter. I'd rather have written "Cheers" than anything I've written. When a man's busy, leisure strikes him as a wonderful pleasure; and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy. To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead. Happiness to a dog is what lies on the other side of the door. Man would be otherwise. That is the essence of the specifically human. He who would be happy should stay at home. He who leaves his house in search of happiness pursues a shadow. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones. He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another. - Aesop We are under the spell always of what is distant from us. It is not in our nature to desire passionately what is near at hand. In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else. In Rome you long for the country. In the country you praise to the skies the distant town. - Horace He who would be happy should stay at home. Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain he would get well if he were by the window. It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who want something more; that of the sick, who want something different; and that of the traveler, who says, "Anywhere but here." Happiness grows at our firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens. Men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one. If solid happiness we prize, within our breast this jewel lies, And they are fools who roam; the world has nothing to bestow, From our own selves our bliss must flow, And that dear hut-our home. A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home. Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps till the legend, "over steep ways to the stars," fulfills itself. The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well. Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy they are who already possess it. What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others. Nobody's problem is ideal. Nobody has things just as he would like them. Everybody in the world ought to be sorry for everybody else. We all have our little private hell. We are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. Men would be angels; angels would be gods. None think the great unhappy but the great. If every man's internal care Were written on his brow, How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now? Misfortunes come to all men. You have no idea how big the other fellow's troubles are. I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy. I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once, when I was on the bestseller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes. Great and small suffer the same mishaps. I thought I had reached a point in life where everything would be smooth. But it is not. It just gets more jagged and pitted and filled with turns that take you into the dark recesses of your mind. It never seems to get easy. If I were given a change of life, I'd like to see how it would be to live as a mere six-footer. I just want to be an ordinary girl. Money is another pressure. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that there's a certain luxury in having no money. I spent ten years in New York not having it, not worrying about it. Suddenly you have it, then you worry, where is it going? Am I doing the right thing with it? On the outside one is a star. But in reality, one is completely alone, doubting everything. To experience this loneliness of soul is the hardest thing in the world. There is no man in this world without some manner of tribulation or anguish, though he be king or pope. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure. There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline; in some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances. None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them. Renown is a source of toil and sorrow; obscurity is a source of happiness. My crown is called content; a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. If I had my life to live over, I wish I could be a great pianist or something. There is no armour against fate; death lays his icy hands on kings. Pale death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings. - Horace I want to be able to live without a crowded calendar. I want to be able to read a book without feeling guilty, or go to a concert when I like. I'd like to be a truck driver. I think you could run your life that way. It wouldn't be such a bad way of doing it. It would offer a chance to be alone. There is as much confusion in the world of the gods as in ours. Pray the gods do not envy your happiness! The suffering of the rich is among the sweetest pleasures of the poor. Oh God, don't envy me, I have my own pains. Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed. I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him. I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy. I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once, when I was on the bestseller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes. Men are all the same. They always think that something they are going to get is better than what they have got. Not all speed is movement. Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That's why it satisfies nobody. Oh, I wish that God had not given me what I prayed for! It was not so good as I thought. Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful. Ambition, having reached the summit, longs to descend. What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, who he assumes to have perfect vision. Wanting to change, to improve, a person's situation means offering him, for difficulties in which he is practiced and experienced, other difficulties that will find him perhaps even more bewildered. Being considered beautiful at a young age sends confusing signals. You think people only like you because of your beauty. Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth. When I was fourteen, I was the oldest I ever was. ... I've been getting younger ever since. A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. Sure, I'm for helping the elderly. I'm going to be old myself someday. Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it. A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world. We turn not older with years, but newer every day. Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves. The middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither: the past stretches back too densely, it is too thickly populated, the future has not yet thinned out. It is not how old you are, but how you are old. One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young. When you become 100, life changes completely. This is a youth-oriented society, and the joke is on them because youth is a disease from which we all recover. Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator. I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious. It is so comical to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose! I enjoy my wrinkles and regard them as badges of distinction-I've worked hard for them! Time-our youth-it never really goes, does it? It is all held in our minds. Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. We all lose our looks eventually, better develop your character and interest in life. The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more. The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it. A woman may develop wrinkles and cellulite, lose her waistline, her bust-line, her ability to bear a child, even her sense of humor, but none of that implies a loss of her sexuality, her femininity. Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do. In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long. How long can you be cute? Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas-that's what my grandma taught me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When you're fifty, you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. I am desperate and vulnerable. ... I am always terrified.... Beauty can sometimes be so very troublesome. I hate myself on the screen. I want to die ... my voice is either too high or too gravelly. I want to dive under the carpet.... I'd love to be tall and willowy ... I'm short. After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies. I don't like my voice. I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I move. I don't like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don't like myself. Not always the fanciest cake that's there Is the best to eat! No, Doctor, I don't want to grow young again. I just want to keep on growing old. It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years, and that, too, with surprising strides. I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the i point. When you've got the personality, you don't need the nudity. - Mae West The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it. Beauty can get a woman what she wants: love and money. But when beauty leaves you, so can the things it brought. If you're considered a beauty, it's hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around. Just because you're beautiful, they think you can't act.... I've got a lot more to prove. I intimidate men.... People look a lot, but there's no line outside my door. People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart. I can count the number of dates I've had on one hand. I wish that guys would approach me, but they don't. When you step on the first tee it doesn't matter what you look like. ... It doesn't help your 5-iron if you're pretty. For years I stopped reading beauty magazines because I couldn't look at one without wanting to blow my brains out. How can those women look so good? Each time I get off a plane in Hollywood, I don't think I'm pretty enough. Frankly, I like the fact that I no longer fit the young beauty type-people take me more seriously now. You know how many stunning women told me they can't stand a good-looking man? ... Women feel secure with an ugly guy because a man in bad shape isn't gonna cheat. Outstanding beauty, like outstanding gifts of any kind, tends to get in the way of normal emotional development, and thus of that particular success in life which we call happiness. A full bosom is actually a millstone around a woman's neck. ... [Breasts] are not parts of a person but lures slung around her neck, to be kneaded and twisted like magic putty, or mumbled and mouthed like lolly ices. Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet. - Sa'di I'm walking insecurity. Without all this makeup, I look like a refugee when I get up in the morning.... I generally look like one major bowwow. I mean arf. You start out happy that you have no hips or boobs. All of a sudden you get them, and it feels sloppy. Then just when you start liking them, they start dropping. The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer. Guys think that if a girl is pretty, she's automatically going to say no. Most of the guy's I've gone out with, I've had to make it completely obvious that I'd like them to ask me out. Or, I've had to ask them. I think if I weren't so beautiful, maybe I'd have more character. Not many people ask me out. The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way. Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged. I murmured because I had no shoes, until I met man who had no feet. Comparison, more than reality, makes men happy or wretched. The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy. Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another. If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own. - Cicero Every horse thinks his own pack heaviest. Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will. To think well of every other man's condition, and to dislike our own, is one of the misfortunes of human nature. Other people's eggs have two yolks. No story ever looks as bad as the story you've just bought; no story ever looks as good as the story the other fellow just bought. If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart. - Solon Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex; you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. Envy is an insult to oneself. Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies. Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape. Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold in the heart. Envy eats nothing but its own heart. Jealousy is all the fun you think they had. Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits. In jealousy there is more of self-love than love. Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one's own inferiority. It is a mental cancer. Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive. There is no greater glory than love, nor any greater punishment than jealousy. As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man. Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it. The jealous are troublesome to others, but torment to themselves. Envy and fear are the only passions to which no pleasure is attached. If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang. Envy is a kind of praise. - John Gay Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good fortune. Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts. To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self. If envy were a fever, all the world would be ill. Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity. The heaven of the envied is hell for the envious. You can't be envious and happy at the same time. The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things. It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own. Friendship, which is of its nature a delicate thing, fastidious, slow of growth, is easily checked, will hesitate, demur, recoil where love, good old blustering love, bowls ahead and blunders through every obstacle. - Colette It is all right to say exactly what you think if you have learned to think exactly. Silence sweeter is than speech. When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion. The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness? True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes. The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side. 
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