Justin Lawler > Justin's Quotes

“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
― John Steinbeck

“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life: The Classic Essay Collection on the Creative Process

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”
― Danielle LaPorte

“You will always be too much of something for someone: too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. If you round out your edges, you lose your edge.”
― Danielle LaPorte

“As the legend goes, when the Phoenix resurrects from the flames, she is even more beautiful than before.”
― Danielle LaPorte

“You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.”
― Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage

“Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable.”
― Nick Hornby, How to Be Good

“Don't ask the world to change....you change first.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“As one man said, "I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it." That's what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning. Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“If you find me charming, it means that right now you’re in a good mood, nothing more.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Don’t try to make them happy, you’ll only get in trouble. Don’t try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it irritates the pig.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“(talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”
― Kurt Vonnegut