| 6 March, 2009 |
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Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard. There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along, too. To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun? It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. A stitch in time would have confused Einstein. Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one. Hitch your wagon to a star. Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. America is a mistake, a giant mistake. A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Every artist was first an amateur. Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness. Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days. The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. We need men who can dream of things that never were. Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. |
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