Zach Hall > Zach's Quotes

“This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.”
― Fulton J. Sheen

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

“I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”
― Aristotle

“Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.”
― Lisa Lutz, The Spellmans Strike Again

“Always forgive, but never forget, else you will be a prisoner of your own hatred, and doomed to repeat your mistakes forever.”
― Wil Zeus, Sun Beyond the Clouds

“Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.”
― Stephen King

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
― Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice

“When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.”
― Sun Tzu

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
― Aristotle

“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.”
― Lao Tzu, Te-Tao Ching

“If you reveal your secrets to the wind,
you should not blame the wind for
revealing them to the trees.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Wanderer

“The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
― Epicurus

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― Seneca

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
― Aristotle

“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”
― Kahlil Gibran, Mirrors of the Soul

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
― Zhuangzi, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu

“Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power," Tuek said. "You might find the line between life and death among the Fremen to be too sharp and quick.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If you can't fight and you can't flee, flow.”
― Robert Elias M.D.

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.”
― Lao Tzu

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”
― erma bombeck