Quotes by Writers - Page 50

Talent is 98% hard work - even Brel said so. The best signal for lack of talent is therefore quite simply low production. That does of course not mean high production guarantees talent, so something does exist that needs to be present - what is that? Talent and Drive - both are quite useless without the other, but what exactly is 'talent'? I would say its a form of the unconditioned: in some people it survives, even unto old age. Some learn to focus it on a particular craft. But without drive, it still goes nowhere.
Martijn Benders
He sent the trained dog that is his talent off in search of a fat glorious pheasant, and it brought back the lower half of a Barbie doll.
George Saunders
Was the whole matter of aptitudes a myth – a copout used by people like me to avoid subjects that would force us to think inTherefore threatening ways?
William Zinsser
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not explore and share the precious gifts within went through life feeling miserable, sad, awkward with others, and angry too. You had to develop a talent, Aunt Habiba said, so that you could give something, share and shine. And you developed a talent by working very hard at becoming good at something. It could be anything - singing, dancing, cooking, embroidering, listening, looking, smiling, waiting, accepting, dreaming, rebelling, leaping. 'Anything you can do well can change your life', said Aunt Habiba.
Fatema Mernissi
Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to po or suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time or is like to--this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favourably on the morality of the country?
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Terry Gilliam has spoken scathingly about my preference for physical comfort. I have come to the conclusion that this is very much his problem.
John Cleese
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.
Mette Ivie Harrison
Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind.I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People like hurting each other but loving is not a waste.
Ai Yazawa
Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it.
Aldous Huxley
The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action.
Lena Dunham
Even though I know that breaking your brain is the same as breaking your arm, I'm still ashamed that my brain is broken.
A.S. King
I mean, okay, let's say we're all going to get better. Let's just pretend we will. Fine. Where are we going to go after we get better? What are we going to do with all of our newfound healthy behaviors? Back out into the world that screwed us up and screwed us over. This does not sound promising.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
What you inherit from your fathermust first be earned before it's yours.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When he comes to the doorhe always looks mocking and half-way angry.You can see he has sympathy for nothing.It's written on his foreheadthat he can love no one.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Being full of mischief, they love to listen;they gladly obey, for they like to betray you,pretending to be sent from Heaven,and lisping like angels, while they lie.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Glib tongues frill up their hash of knowledgefor mankind in polished speechesthat are no more than vaporous windsrustling the fallen leaves in autumn.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Then a boy, pale as death, rushed into the hall, uttering a wild scream of terror. “Death and another are closely pursuing me!
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué
Don't let the devil hear you, minister, The devil has such good hearing he doesn't need things to be spoken out loud, Well, god help us then, There's no point asking him for help either, he was born stone-deaf.
José Saramago
The greatest modern error is not to proclaim that God died, but to believe that the devil has died.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
That's why there's a devil—to judge the priests.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A Voltairian of good stock,” he murmured.“What is that supposed to mean?” I growled.“To believe a little in God and much in the devil!”“Well, yes, Mister Hilmacher, and if the devil is not a part in this business, let him take me to Hell!” “Mister Burgomaster, you insult the devil. He who undervalues the devil belittles God. I fail to see why the Almighty would occupy Himself with our most insignificant actions and thoughts, like a good old woman during the endless tea hours, and I would find the role of Old Nick singularly petty indeed should he amuse himself with a giant pleasantry that sends a herd and its guardians into the mortal mud of the swamp.
Jean Ray
Truth and falsehood pass through the same lips and leave no mark, the devil does not cease to be the devil just because he may have spoken the truth.
José Saramago
As the dragon charged it released huge clouds of hissing steam through its nostrils. It was almost as if a gigantic teapot had gone mad.
Heywood Broun
With the suggestion of a compromise Gawaine mustered up enough courage to speak."What will you do if I surrender?" he asked."Why, I'll eat you," said the dragon."And if I don't surrender?""I'll eat you just the same.
Heywood Broun
Let's see," mused the dragon, "that doesn't tell us much, does it? What sort of a word is this? Is it an epithet, do you think?"Gawaine could do no more than nod."Why, of course," exclaimed the dragon, "reactionary Republican.
Heywood Broun
Here you have learned the theories of life," continued the Headmaster, resuming the thread of his discourse, "but after all, life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant. Your problem, for example, is to slay dragons.
Heywood Broun
Make no mistake, Marin...a Dragon Guardian may not always be the one sitting upon the throne, but he or she is the protector of the entire realm.
Aida Jacobs
My love...you were insolent to a dragon? Please tell me that I misheard you just now.
Aida Jacobs
Not that this deterred him and his friend Klapaucius from further experimentation, which showed that the extent of a dragon's existence depends mainly on its whim, though also on its degree of satiety, and that the only sure method of negating it is to reduce the probability to zero or lower. All this research, naturally enough, took a great deal of time and energy; meanwhile the dragons that had gotten loose were running rampant, laying waste to a variety of planets and moons. What was worse, they multiplied. Which enabled Klapaucius to publish an excellent article entitled "Covariant Transformation from Dragons to Dragonets, in the Special Case of Passage from States Forbidden by the Laws of Physics to Those Forbidden by the Local Authorities.
Stanisław Lem
Mothers were much too sharp. They were like dogs. Buster always sensed when anything was out of the ordinary, and so did mothers. Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people's minds and know when anything unusual was going on.
Enid Blyton
The fear of dogs is deep and universal amongst all that are less than Man.
Lord Dunsany
In a society where people are obsessed with personal space, dogs have come to serve as welcome, neo-human mediators of loneliness and solitude.
Okey Ndibe
My dog is half pit-bull, half poodle. Not much of a watchdog, but a vicious gossip!
Craig Shoemaker
To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected.
Eva Ibbotson
I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see a wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies.
Merrill Markoe
Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.
Eva Ibbotson
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous Huxley
If I am attempting to describe him, it is in order not to forget him. It is sad to forget a friend. Not every one has had a friend.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
What is a friend? I will tell you...it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.” ― Frank Crane
Frank Crane
I don’t want any other friends! They’d never be as good a friend as you are.
Rebecca McNutt
It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous
Rex Stout
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)
Voltaire
I don't wanna be the joker who makes eyes full of tears in the end
Ags Orachimaruu
The real comic muse is the one underwhose laughing mask tears roll down.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Tears are for happiness.
Marjorie Agosín
I cry as the laughter inside me drowns and descends into the water with the ghosts of our union.
A.P. Sweet
The thing about tears is that they can be as quiet as a cloud floating across the desert sky.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
How do you want us to tune the lens and our eyes are filled with tears
Ahlam Mosteghanemi
I was all too aware that there's an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so. I told myself that my tears were due tot he cold, and I believed myself.
Herta Müller
But...that doesn't make any sense...!''It does if you're a goat.
Linda Medley
At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most decent, well-argued stance ending up with their face in the mud in front of a naked display of power.
Mark Barrowcliffe
One can accomplish something only so long as one cannot accomplish everything.
Stanisław Lem
Whatever form your body takes from a fierce and healthy lifestyle is a beautiful body. Beauty isn't looking a specific way or having a specific body fat percentage. It just so happens that a fierce and healthy lifestyle forms a slim and athletic body.We who do fitness for the right reasons still end up being judged as superficial just because we end up as slim. When we can't really help it, it's just biology doing its thing.
Aiden Hall
Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
Daniel C. Dennett
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
You laugh as you sing about dying, you drug yourself up, but you can still see clearly, and you die as you break into a fit of laughter, because asi es la vida in this soup of islands stewed in hunger and the desire to be someone else.
Mayra Santos-Febres