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Right Quotes and Quotations
 The great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don't want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do.  Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread. There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage. Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him. You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. I want to do it because I want to do it. Personality, too, is destiny. The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me. I don't go by the rule book-I lead from the heart, not the head. A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them, for they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world. When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman. Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying. The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law. The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours. There is just one life for each of us: our own. People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not. Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other. The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only the prelude to understanding yourself and others. Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path ... a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do ... to find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him. I don't tell the truth any more to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself, because it always changes me. To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problem of contentment. In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person's development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers. This is the chief thing: be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal. Dedication to one's work in the world is the only possible sanctifica-tion. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else's work, not yours. What's a joy to the one is a nightmare to the other. Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people. What's important is finding out what works for you. Everyone has a right to his own course of action. - Moliere Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are, and not another. You are free to be that man, but not free to be another. What one man does, another fails to do; what's fit for me may not be fit for you. Let them know a real man, who lives as he was meant to live. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. There's no right way of writing. There's only your way. Every man must get to heaven his own way. There are as many ways to live and grow as there are people. Our own ways are the only ways that should matter to us. Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road. Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it. Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing? ... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that. I'll walk where my own nature would be leading; it vexes me to choose another guide. If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy it there. He who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints. To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it. To have no set purpose in one's life is harlotry of the will. A rose is a rose is a rose. Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. True inward quietness ... is not vacancy, but stability-the steadfastness of a single purpose. Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that worked on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn list of good intentions. No matter where I run, I meet myself there. A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men-and people in general. There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely. The condemned man has that joy. Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are. As you go along your road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance ... but no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still-and persevere. When a just cause reaches its flood-tide, as ours has done ..., whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power. The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that. To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time. Keep integrity and your work ethics intact. So what if that means working a little harder; an honorable character is your best calling card, and that's something anyone can have! The world may take your reputation from you, but it cannot take your character. We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history. I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. Keep your promises to yourself. The possibilities are unlimited as long as you are true to your life's purpose. Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate; As the voyage along thru life; 'Tis the will of the soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife. I believe there's an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts. I was and I always shall be hampered by what I think other people will say. No matter how ill we may be, nor how low we may have fallen, we should not change identity with any other person. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it. I argue that we deserve the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically. Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody other than the person he is. To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is one and the same thing. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves. No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. Misfortunes occur only when a man is false.... Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown. Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth. Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do. Do not wish to be anything but what you are. I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win. Truth has beauty, power, and necessity. It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity. Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own self Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you cannot build the house without them. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive. Do what thy manhood bids thee do. We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves. The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn't your real life. All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it. What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature. We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war. With begging and scrambling we find very little, but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more. While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you will be nothing. - Martial The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is. Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable. Our whole life is an attempt to discover when our spontaneity is whimsical, sentimental irresponsibility and when it is a valid expression of our deepest desires and values. Until you know that life is interesting, and find it so, you haven't found your soul. It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. Learn what you are, and be such. - Pindar We are betrayed by what is false within. If I trim myself to suit others I will soon whittle myself away. This above all: to thine own self be true. In the world to come they will not ask me, "Why were you not Moses?" They will ask me, "Why were you not Zusya?" A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart. All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself. What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself. Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. It is possible to be different and still be all right. Let me listen to me and not to them. She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself. I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. The crow that mimics a cormorant gets drowned. Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you? I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes. Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness. Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher's credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy. Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is. - Erasmus Follow what you love! Don't deign to ask what "they" are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love, which will and should not change. All the discontented people I know are trying to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do. Dress to please yourself.... Forget you are what you wear.... Wear what you are. Resolve to be thyself ... he who finds himself loses his misery! If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security: we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us. Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route. A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature. Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life. All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they aim at the same end. Be not imitator; freshly act thy part; Through this world be thou an independent ranger; Better is the faith that springeth from thy heart Than a better faith belonging to a stranger. There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely. Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators. 'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free. 'Tis a gift to come round to where we ought to be. And when we find a place that feels just right, We will be in the valley of love and delight. You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life. I is who I is. There are as many ways to live and grow as there are people. Our own ways are the only ways that should matter to us. The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. Take your own color in the pattern and be just that. The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the human interest the old personality can take in new activities. We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves. Our concern must be to live while we're alive ... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. I searched through rebellion, drugs, diets, mysticism, religions, intellectu-alism and much more, only to begin to find ... that truth is basically simple-and feels good, clean and right. If you're gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy. That suit is best that best suits me. The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates. Your readiest desire is your path to joy ... even if it destroys you. Individuals learn faster than institutions and it is always the dinosaur's brain that is the last to get the new messages. Go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize after something's been done than to get permission ahead of time. Innovators are inevitably controversial. I'm not going to limit myself just because some people won't accept the fact that I can do something else. Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done. It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's "mature" critics often are. I was the kind nobody thought could make it. I had a funny Boston accent. I couldn't pronounce my R's. I wasn't a beauty. Power is strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. Getting fit is a political act-you are taking charge of your life. I'm uncomfortable when I'm comfortable ... I can't help it, it's my personality. For a long time the only time I felt beautiful-in the sense of being complete as a woman, as a human being, and even female-was when I was singing. The source of continuing aliveness was to find your passion and pursue it, with whole heart and single mind. I look at ordinary people in their suits, them with no scars, and I'm different. I don't fit with them. I'm where everybody's got scar tissue on their eyes and got noses like saddles. I go to conventions of old fighters like me and I see the scar tissue and all them flat noses and it's beautiful. ... They talk like me, like they got rocks in their throats. Beautiful! I have the feeling when I write poetry that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. You don't think about whether you're going to get money or fame, you just do it. A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him. I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end, but a unique event in itself. It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. In the first grade, I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn't know the living of it, but I knew the line. ... From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus. I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best. Each of us has some unique capability waiting for realization. Every person is valuable in his own existence, for himself alone ... each of us can bring to fruition these innate, God-given abilities. All of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their fullest extent. ... And every life must be chalked up at least a partial failure when it does not succeed in reaching its inherent destiny. The same man cannot be skilled in everything; each has his special excellence. Any talent that we are born with eventually surfaces as a need. The best career advice given to the young ... is "Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it." Skills vary with the man. We must... strive by that which is born in us. - Pindar People are always neglecting something they can do in trying to do something they can't do. A man like Verdi must write like Verdi. I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am. Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts. - Plato Genius does what it must, talent does what it can. Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use. We don't see many fat men walking on stilts. I was playing it like Willie Wilson, but I forgot that I'm in Clint Hurdle's body. We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects. I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion. To every man according to his ability. - Bible If a man is called to be a streetsweep-er, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. Men whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly. We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities. The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources. The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. Are you doing the kind of work you were built for, so that you can expect to be able to do very large amounts of that kind and thrive under it? Or are you doing a kind of which you can do comparatively little? Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come. Whenever it is possible, a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money. The fun of being alive is realizing you have a talent and you can use it every day so it grows stronger.... And if you're in an atmosphere where this talent is appreciated instead of just tolerated, why, it's just as good as sex. It is only when I am doing my work that I feel truly alive. It is like having sex. If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know. The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness. Everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has the aptitude for it or not. To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what interests you and that you can do well, and put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have. One should stick to the sort of thing for which one was made; I tried to be an herbalist, whereas I should keep to the butcher's trade. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. When men are rightfully occupied, then their amusement grows out of their work as the color petals out of a fruitful garden. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. We do not write as we want but as we can. Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed. Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other. It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of his instrument with an internal sense of Tightness-it is not merely mechanical, it is not only spiritual; it is something of both, on a different plane and a more remote one. We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet, is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly curved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on ... the arrangement of textures and colors in a butterfly's wing? - Ray Kroc The question "Who ought to be boss" is like asking "Who ought to be tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What really matters is what you do with what you have. I know that I haven't powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates. Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do ... within the limits of his comprehension. The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race. Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his abilities, and for no more. Me, I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlep-per. I just do what I can do. The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called. When I was young, I said to God, "God, tell me the mystery of the universe." But God answered, "That knowledge is reserved for me alone." So I said, "God, tell me the mystery of the peanut." Then God said, "Well George, that's more nearly your size." And he told me. I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities. No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one. Choose a subject equal to your abilities; think carefully what your shoulders may refuse, and what they are capable of bearing. - Horace In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it. The driver knows how much the ox can carry, and keeps the ox from being overloaded. You know your way and your state of mind. Do not carry too much. If you could once make up your mind never to undertake more work ... than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or flurry ... and if the instant you feel yourself growing nervous and ... out of breath, you would stop and take breath, you would find this simple common-sense rule doing for you what no prayers or tears could ever accomplish. The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming, and what one has in fact become. What I wanted was to be allowed to do the thing in the world that I did best-which I believed then and believe now is the greatest privilege there is. When I did that, success found me. I had already learned from more than a decade of political life that I was going to be criticized no matter what I did, so I might as well be criticized for something I wanted to do. There is only one success-to be able to spend your life in your own way. The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be? We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that. Success based on anything but internal fulfillment is bound to be empty. We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects. All I would tell people is to hold on to what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find in on your own terms. For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (i) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening. One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general, if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. We only do well the things we like doing. - Colette Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be. Different people have different duties assigned to them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat. A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting. We can't all be heroes, because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. I'd rather be a lamppost in Chicago than a millionaire in any other city. Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it. Do what you love, the money will follow. I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do. Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life. Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come. If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know. A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day. Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own. (This is easier said than done.) You must be holy in the way God asks you to be holy. God does not ask you to be a Trappist monk or a hermit. He wills that you sanctify your everyday life. Bloom where you are planted. The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society-more briefly, to find your real job, and do it. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. We don't know who we are until we see what we can do. If Heaven made him, earth can find some use for him. Don't do anything that someone else can do for you because there are only so many things that only you can do. The hole and the patch should be commensurate. The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing. If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. - Socrates Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants, lives so as to give a meaning and a value to his own life. Sir, I would rather be right than be President. He will hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may. Be sure you are right, then go ahead. Two wrongs can never make a right. Let us have faith that Right makes Might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. Right is the eternal sun; the world cannot delay its coming. One truth is clear, Whatever is is right. Heaven itself has ordained the right. 
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