Lam Dang > Lam's Quotes

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition”
― Tagore, Rabindranath

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
― John Muir

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
― John Muir, The Mountains of California

“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
― John Muir

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
― David Foster Wallace

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.”
― John F. Kennedy

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”
― John F. Kennedy

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
― John F. Kennedy

“Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

[Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

“And there is escaping things the knowledge of which makes one unhappy. If "truth" is what we know and are aware of, in the most engrossing fiction we escape truth. Whatever else it is, drama is forgetfulness. We can forget and forget that we are forgetting. It is temporary mind control. If memories are pain, fiction is anesthesia.”
― Thomas C. Schelling

“One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.”
― Diogenes Laërtius

“That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.”
― Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

“I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.”
― Robert Walser, The Tanners

“One is always half mad when one is shy of people.”
― Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

“How uninteresting interesting things can become.”
― Robert Walser, Masquerade and Other Stories

“When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm, it’s easy to stay silent.”
― Robert Walser, Masquerade and Other Stories

“Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!
...
You have been my body's health. Whenever I have read a book, it was you I was reading, not the book, you were the book. You were, you were.”
― Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

“By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.”
― Democritus

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”
― Adrienne Rich