~ a friend of mine
Universe
~ a friend of mine
Category: Quotes … Thu
Quote Thursdays
~ a friend of mine
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up
“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”
~ E. E. Cummings
… in the Details
God is in the details.
~ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect
When I’m writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.
~ Donna Tartt, writer
In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a leitmotiv.
~ Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer
One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite – that particular peach is but a detail.
~ Pablo Picasso, painter and sculptor
Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house – the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.
~ Benjamin Britten, conductor
As a journalist, the details always tell the story.
~ James McBride, writer and musician
On Freedom
Everything can be taken but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
~ Viktor Frankl
Freedom lies in being bold.
~ Robert Frost
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
~ Albert Einstein
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
~ Patrick Henry
The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
~ John Stuart Mill
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
~ Thomas Jefferson
(and my favorite)
Freedom is from within.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
The Borrowee
“The borrowee must be aware of the borrowing, otherwise it’s not borrowing but stealing.”
~ friend of mine (who also refers to himself one day a year as the “birthdayee”)
How You Do Anything …
HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING
I read the above quote in this book today. And, having read this phrase, I’m reminded of a line in this book, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. … Always say “yes” to the present moment.”
How you do anything is how you do everything.
What if you decided to start paying deep attention and deep respect to each action you take? What would that feel like? And deep attention and deep respect to each person you interact with – even if it’s the five-second eye contact while crossing the street or a phone call from someone when you’re too busy to relax and give full attention, but what if you did anyway?
Today is today. Today is alive. How you do anything in your life at any point today shows the attitude you have to everything in your life. Respect yourself, your boundaries, your possibilities. How you do anything shows how much you respect yourself.
Take-Away: How you do anything shows your attitude towards doing the other things in your life.
Elegance
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
~ Margaret Thatcher
Few Quotes on Intuition
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”
– Joyce Brothers
The poet Amy Lowell was asked, “How are poems made?”
“I don’t know … I meet them where they touch consciousness and that is already a considerable distance along the road of evolution.”
– Amy Lowell
“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own instead of someone else’s.”
– Billy Wilder, director of movies, including Some Like It Hot and Sabrina
A Confession of Character
“People seem not to see,” says Emerson, “that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”
“What you are will show in what you do.” ~ Thomas Edison