A Curated Selection of Quotes (July 2024)

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“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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“Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything."

- Nikola Tesla

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"There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It's why you were born. And how you become most truly alive."

- Oprah Winfrey

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"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman

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"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others."

- Roy T. Bennett

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"We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist."

- E.B. White

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"The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest... It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become."

- Lady Bird Johnson

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"We all need to learn to become comfortable with ourselves as early as possible, and to grasp that we are responsible for who we are."

- Gisele Bundchen

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“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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“It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.”

— A. J. Ayer

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"The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want; it's wanting what you get."

- Alex Trebek

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“Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.”

— Anton Chekhov

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"For it is all or nothing in this life, for there is no other."

— Larry Levis

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“I must be a mermaid; I have no fear of depth and a great fear of shallow living.”

— Anaïs Nin

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"Three secrets to success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people."

- Sally Ride

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"You write your life story by the choices you make."

- Dame Helen Mirren

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“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

— George Orwell

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“No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.”

— George Orwell

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“Those who do the most, often talk — sometimes think — the least: yet thinkers, talkers, and doers, being in earnest, achieve their appointed end. The thinkers put wisdom into the mouth of the speakers, and both strive together to animate and counsel the doers. Thus all work harmoniously together.”

— Dinah Craik

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