Quotes

• To learn business, law, medicine are noble pursuits on how to sustain life. But they do not teach or inform us about the very nature of life itself.

• There's nowhere to go but everywhere, so keep rolling on under the stars.

  — Jack Kerouac

• History is the study of surprises.

• We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

• If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and start again.

• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

  — Picasso

• Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step ahead of logic.

• People cry not because they're weak, but because they've been strong for too long.

  — Johnny Depp

• The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

  — Jack Kerouac, On the Road

• One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

  — Jack Kerouac

• I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

  — Jack Kerouac

• We live in a world where the young want to get older and the old yearn for younger days.

• Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

  — Søren Kierkegaard

• So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end — not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must.

  — Brian Doyle

• It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.

  What is it about the night that gives us courage, and why is it that the morning brings about sense?

• We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

• All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.

  — J.R.R. Tolkien

• What we do now echoes in eternity.

  — Marcus Aurelius

• Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

  — Nicole Krauss

• We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.

  — Tom Stoppard

• Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.

  — Hermann Hesse

• We are the heroes of our time. But we're dancing with the demons in our minds.

• I would insist that the man who spends four years in our North Country and does not learn to hear the melody of rustling leaves or does not learn to love the wash of racing brooks over their rocky beds in the spring — who has never experienced the repose to be found on lakes and rivers, who has not stood enthralled on the top of Moosilauke on a moonlit night or has not become a worshipper of color as he has seen the sunset from one of Hanover's hills, who has not thrilled at the whiteness of the snow-clad countryside in winter or at the flaming forest colors of the fall — I would insist that this man has not reached out for some of the most worthwhile educational values accessible to him at Dartmouth.

  — Dartmouth

• It is a small school, and yet there are those who love her.

  — Daniel Webster

• For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

  — John Donne

• If only the young knew, if only the old could.

• I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

  — Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

• Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. You know who you are when you become independent enough to have your own thoughts and responsible for your actions, and not only believe what you want, but live what you believe.

  — Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

• Cool is a natural law. If it was cool for that time, then it is cool for all time. A fad is just a branch on cool's trunk. Cool stands the test of time because cool never tries. Cool just is.

  — Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

• The older you get the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin, man, just keep livin.

  — Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

• Stay in the joy of doing, within yourself, and you will never choke. Performing in real time where the approach is the destination. A roof is a manmade thing — reach beyond your limitations.

  — Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

• Where we come from is who we are. But we choose every day who we become.

• Strong back, soft front. Wild heart. Too often we have a defended front built from fear instead of a strong back and a more compassionate front.

  — Brené Brown

• Nothing will bring you peace, you must bring yourself to it.

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• American exceptionalism did not only define the United States as a special nation among lesser nations, it demanded that all Americans believe they, too, were born superior to others, a concept of goodness that requires the existence of evil for its own sustenance.

  — Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country

• To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

  — Ai Weiwei

• Pleasure is not happiness. What keeps us suffering is the constant seeking of pleasures — dopamine is the molecule of more, it is never content. We need to retrain our brain to crave peace over pleasure, and to find joy within challenge and happiness within the process of being alive.

• The best moments were never written about, because they were so good that writing was not necessary. It was only when those moments are lost that writing comes to use. Happiness has no use for the pen.

• Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

• Not promised the win, only the ride.