1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
2832
2833
2834
2835
2836
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| db952a3 | By Blake's model, as I understand it, it's as though the Fifth Symphony existed already in that higher sphere, before Beethoven sat down and played dah-dah-dah-DUM. The catch was this: The work existed only as potential -- without a body, so to speak. It wasn't music yet. You couldn't play it. You couldn't hear it. It needed someone. It needed a corporeal being, a human, an artist (or more precisely a genius, in the Latin sense of "soul" or.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| e579468 | The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 45c17d3 | Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again." | metaphor readers writers | Steven Pressfield | |
| b693119 | Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I'd been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath. Rest in peace, motherfucker. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 309372d | The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work. | artists creativity trouble | Steven Pressfield | |
| de9fac0 | habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accept.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| da484ee | Stay Stupid The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began. Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur's indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be--and cocky enough t.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 0ee480c | Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enroll ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bil.. | liberty sacrifice warrior warrior-ethos | Steven Pressfield | |
| be41b99 | You may think that you've lost your passion, or that you can't identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| df015f4 | The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that b.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 01e98cd | The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and conviction where we are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, "This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I intend to live my life"?" | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 756c4d7 | A thousand years from now" Leonidas declared, "two thousand, three thousand years hence, men a hundred generations yet unborn may, for their private purposes, make journey to our country. They will come, scholars perhaps, or travelers from beyond the sea, prompted by curiosity regarding the past, or appetite for knowledge of the ancients. They will peer out across our plain and probe among the stone and rubble of our nation. What will they .. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| b96646a | The last thing we want is to remain as we are. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| f16ddb6 | The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| c1c883c | THE HUMAN CONDITION The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror. "When the robot learns to hate what it sees," said Jon Stewart, "it will have achieved full humanity." | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 64a5475 | The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell whether he knows it or not. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 85ed068 | The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist co.. | bitterness misery pride soldier war | Steven Pressfield | |
| 8997baa | Don't be a hero, young man. There's no percentage in it. | Raymond Chandler | ||
| 75e2ea2 | There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me. | poet | Anne Carson | |
| 5fc413f | fr. 2 All We as Leaves He (following Homer) compares man's life with the leaves. All we as leaves in the shock of it: spring- one dull gold bounce and you're there. You see the sun? - I built that. As a lad. The Fates lashing their tails in a corner. But (let me think) wasn't it a hotel in Chicago where I had the first of those - my body walking out of the room bent on some deadly errand and me up on the ceiling just sort of fading out.. | Anne Carson | ||
| a41e318 | Then the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual. | self | Anne Carson | |
| 650435e | Where does unbelief begin? When I was young there were degrees of certainty. I could say, Yes I know that I have two hands. Then one day I awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally disappear- | Anne Carson | ||
| 1ff72f5 | THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM [all snap flags] Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem. | philosophy poetry religion | Anne Carson | |
| 3d4aa48 | some hours later they were down at the railroad tracks standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead scattering drops of itself. | Anne Carson | ||
| af90922 | Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about every day now. The instant of nature forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny. He burned in the presence of his mother I hardly know you anymore, she said leaning against the doorway of his room. It had rained suddenly at suppertime, now sunset was st.. | Anne Carson | ||
| f172c45 | Language is what eases the pain of living with other people, language is what makes the wounds come open again. | Anne Carson | ||
| 35626de | Lava bread makes you passionate. | Anne Carson | ||
| dab37b0 | Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path. I shall be a litterateur, at least, all my life; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California." EDGAR ALLAN POE TO FREDERICK WILLIAM THOMAS FEBRUARY 14, 1849" -- | literature-quotes poe-quotes | Andrew Barger | |
| b15fef9 | We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep. | schooling | George P. Pelecanos | |
| 8ed0acd | You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it. In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament .. | Beryl Markham | ||
| 9d96bd0 | I am incapable of a profound remark on the workings of Destiny | Beryl Markham | ||
| b46b7f6 | Their lust to win the love of mortals away from God knows no bounds. | Ted Dekker | ||
| 02a630f | Dire antes que nada, que detesto los grupos, las sectas, las cofradias, los gremios y, en general, esos conjuntos de bichos que se reunen por razones de profesion, de gusto o de mania semejante. Esos conglomerados tienen una cantidad de atributos grotescos: la repeticion del tipo, la jerga, la vanidad de creerse superiores al resto. | Ernesto Sabato | ||
| 1f137f3 | kn ntZr Twyl l nhy@ lh. l 'dr~ km mD~ f~ Hsb `qrb ls`t, mn dhlk lzmn lkwn~ lGmD ldh~ l ymt bSl@ l~ msh`rn wmSy'rn wl y`b' bnshw lHb 'w nhyrh, wl bntZr mwt. lkn m nqD~ mn zmn~ 'n kn rHb m`qd wmshHwn b'shy wdhkryt, kn nhr mZlm Skhb Hyn, whdy' hdw Gryb Hyn akhr k'nh bHr skn 'zl~. | Ernesto Sabato | ||
| 2b710c6 | Entre lo que deseamos vivir y el intrascendente ajetreo en que sucede la mayor parte de la vida se abre una cuna en el alma que separa a hombre de la felicidad como al exiliado de su tierra. | Ernesto Sabato | ||
| 6e2fe35 | Al parecer, la dignidad de la vida humana no estaba prevista en el plan de globalizacion. | globalización vida-humana | Ernesto Sabato | |
| e7f6899 | I love you. I always have, always will. I understand the promises you're talking about and I understand why you can't make them, but I'm going to make a promise to you. No matter which way this plays out, I promise to love you and do my best to make sure whatever path we go down together or separately will be the one that hurts you the least. | Katie McGarry | ||
| 0c4b599 | I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. | thoughts will | Daniel Pinchbeck | |
| 71c6e5b | What these people were trying to create or re-create here in this new world is beyond me. I can't put myself in their minds or their hearts, but I can sympathize with their struggle for an identity, with their puzzlement, which has troubled Americans from the very beginning - Who are we, where do we fit in, where are we going? | experience life | Nelson DeMille | |
| 28519a4 | I want to be back to work next week. 'Let's get you home first. I need to evaluate the extent of your mental impairment.' She tried to flash me the peace sign, but in her weakend condition, she only managed to raise her middle finger. | Nelson DeMille | ||
| b53d0bb | Somehow, amid all the sophistication and diversions of this world, we forgot the basics: take care of business at home first, and never betray your blood. | Nelson DeMille | ||
| 9ed74d3 | I don't like mysteries, which is why I want to solve them. It bothers me that there are things I don't know. | mysteries | Nelson DeMille | |
| 6f759e2 | The moment will pass, but the feeling never will. ~Zeke Coulter | Catherine Anderson | ||
| 312acf0 | Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. | Jack London |