Bill > Bill's Quotes

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”
― Robert Green Ingersoll

“Nothing is stronger than habit.”
― Ovid

“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
― Ovid

“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
― Ovid

“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
― Ovid

“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.

(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.)”
― Ovid

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others...

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ...”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― douglas adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”
― Vince Lombardi

“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”
― Teddy Roosevelt

“That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.”
― Bill Watterson

“Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying?”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day