Miscellaneous

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair. – AndrÃ© Gide, The Counterfeiters, 1925

To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge. – Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1951

It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Crabbed Age and Youth,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881

The sinning is the best part of repentance. – Arab Proverb

Most men are more capable of great actions than of good ones. – Montesquieu, VariÃ¨tÃ¨s

Some defeats [are] more triumphant than victories. – Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1588

The passion to get ahead is sometimes born of the fear lest we be left behind. – Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. – Hubert Humphrey, speech, Madison, Wisconsin, 23 August 1965

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. – G.B. Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” 1898

I find my joy of living in the fierce and ruthless battles of life, and my pleasure comes from learning something. – Auguste Strindberg, Miss Julie, 1888

We look for some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Pulvis et umbra,” 1888

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself. – Henry Adams

Eloquence is vehement simplicity. – Richard Cecil

…for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. – Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” about a sculpture, translated by

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Few great men could pass personnel. – Paul Goodman

I have learned the truth of the observation that the more one approaches great men the more one finds that they are men. – Bernard M. Baruch

No man was ever great without a touch of divine afflatus. – Cicero

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness. – Fred Hoyle, Of Man and Galaxies