Right Attitudes

Hostage is a crucifying aloneness. It is a silent, screaming slide into the bowels of ultimate despair. Hostage is a man hanging by his fingernails over the edge of chaos, feeling his fingers slowly straightening. Hostage is the humiliating stripping away of every sense and fiber of body and mind and spirit that make us what we are. Hostage is a mutant creation filled with fear, self-loathing, guilt and death-wishing. But he is a man, a rare, unique and beautiful creation of which these things are no part.
—Brian Keenan (Irish-British Writer)

People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.
—Anne Tyler (American Novelist)

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blamable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

You don’t retire in this business. You just notice the phone has not rung for 10 years.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
—Jane Jacobs (Canadian Urbanologist)

Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
—James Dickey (American Poet, Novelist)

A countenance habitually under the influence of amiable feelings acquires a beauty of the highest order from the frequency with which such feelings stamp their character upon it.
—Sarah Josepha Hale (American Poet)

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves—or desires.
—Jacquetta Hawkes (English Archaeologist, Writer)

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Frequently, trite ideas or unimaginative translation of those ideas is the result not of poor subject matter but of poor interpretation of a problem.
—Paul Rand (American Graphic Designer)

In God we trust; all others must bring data.
—W. Edwards Deming (American Statistician)

We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us for who we think we are.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
—Jason Zweig (American Personal Finance Columnist)

Like a tortoise withdrawing five limbs into its shell, those who restrain the five senses in one life will find safe shelter for seven.
—The Thirukkural (Indian Tamil Literary Classic)

Do not desire what is impossible.
—Chilon of Sparta (Spartan Magistrate)

A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man—the one he used to be.
—Cesare Pavese (Italian Novelist, Poet)

Just as a man will use a staff to climb a mountain, so should virtue be used in life.
—Yogaswami of Jaffna (Sri Lankan Hindu Religious Leader)

The mind longs for what it has missed.
—Petronius (Roman Courtier)

When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

You should know, O man, that the greatest enemy you have in the world is your inclination.
—Bahya ibn Paquda (Jewish Philosopher)

Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space.
—Patanjali (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

When we grow old, there can only be one regret—not to have given enough of ourselves.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don’t bite everybody.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

You can’t sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces.
—Henry J. Kaiser (American Industrialist)