A view from a different perspective

Sometimes, to learn about ourselves, we must look at other people's lives, because we may not be critical enough towards ourselves, or perhaps, too much.

Following is an assortment of 143 quotes of various shapes and sizes, coming from various different people, that might give you something to think about.

Just a minor note: "unknown" may simply derive from my ignorance, and will be changed if someone points me to the legitimate author.

Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.
-Bruce Lee
 

Long-term consistency trumps short term intensity.
-Bruce Lee
 

Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
-Bruce Lee
 

If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
-Bruce Lee

Deep down in his private heart, no man respects himself much.
-Mark Twain
 

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
-Mark Twain
 

But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
-Mark Twain
 

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
-Mark Twain
 

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
-Mark Twain
 

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
-Mark Twain

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to to preserve and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
-Christopher Reeve
 

If you want something you never had, then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.
-unknown
 

After changing yourself to fit into society, you’ll eventually going to want your old self back sooner or later.
-unknown
 

If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell them. People never get the flowers while they could smell them.
-Kanye West
 

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ’Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.
-Kanye West

 

Best advice that I ever got is to do whatever it takes to make myself happy, so that I’ll be able to make others happy. If I’m not happy, I can’t make other people happy.
-William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. aka Flavor Flav
 

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
-Stephen Covey
 

Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man and give some back.
-Al Swearengen
 

Nobody realizes that some people spend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
-Albert Camus
 

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
-Albert Einstein
 

The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.
-Albert Einstein
 

Don’t believe everything you think.
-unknown
 

Good experiences! My brain is still functioning.
-Hans Zimmer, when asked on his experiences with drugs
 

Writing scores is a bit like surgery, you never remember the pain. I keep talking about how much fun I had on inception, and the rest of my team reminds me that I nearly killed myself. They seem to get harder and harder.
-Hans Zimmer
 

Read, read, read, read, read. Read everything. You cant work unless you know the world, and outside of living in the world the best way to learn about the world is to read about it.
-John Goodman
 

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
-Marcus Aurelius

 

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ’It might have been.’
-John Greenleaf Whittier
 

No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.
-Aristotle
 

The activity you’re most avoiding contains your biggest opportunity.
-Robin Sharma
 

Until you get comfortable with being alone, you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness.
-Mandy Hale
 

Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.
-Simong Pegg
 

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving trhough traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
-Ellen Goodman
 

When everything goes wrong and things seem to fall apart. When nobody believes in you and you feel alone and stranded. That’s EXACTLY the moment you gotta believe in yourself.
-unknown
 

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
-Benjamin Franklin
 

Every time you open a book and read it, a tree smiles knowing there’s life after death.
-unknown

 

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
-Buddha
 

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
-Buddha
 

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
-Charles Bukowski
 

Find what you love and let it kill you.
-Charles Bukowski
 

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid people are full of confidence.
-Charles Bukowski

 

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
-Carl Sagan
 

Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
-George Carlin
 

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who’s doing it.
-Chinese proverb
 

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
-Chinese proverb
 

College is the place where you go when you don’t want to do shit. It’s a place to hide until you figure things out. While it’s important to actually be interested in the subject you’re studying, it is mainly an opportunity to get away from society in general and continue to pursue your interests in what is most certainly not the real world.
-Lewis Black
 

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
-unknown
 

Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.
-unknown
 

Confused? At a loss for what to do? Wow, sounds like you’re human. Good luck.
-unknown
 

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
-Joseph Chilton Pearce
 

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.
(say something, do something, disobey)
Oscar Wilde
 

Expect the best, be prepared for the worst, fuck what others thing and do your own thing.
-unknown
 

Year in and year out, you bring grief on yourselves! All for the sake of getting rich, staying rich, or getting richer still. You’ll never be happy, because you always worry about what you’ll do next to complicate your own greedy lives!
-Donald Duck
 

First they will laugh. Then they will copy. Don’t. Give. Up.
-unknown
 

Doubt kills more dreams that failure ever will.
-unknown
 

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
-Sylvia Plath
 

In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
-Douglas Adams
 

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.
-Kurt Vonnegut

 

Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
-Dr. Suess
 

It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
-Emiliano Zapata
 

If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.
-Ernest Hemingway
 

Write drunk, edit sober.
-Ernest Hemingway
 

So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
-Hunter S. Thompson
 

The expert in anything was once a beginner.
-unknown
 

Avoid using the word ’very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.
-unknown
 

If you feel like shit everyone you hate wins.
-Fight Club
 

We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.
-Fight Club
 

By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
-Charles Wadsworth
 

Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens.
-on a fortune cookie
 

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-Frank Herbert
 

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
-Frank Zappa
 

I demolish my bridges behind me - then there is no choice but forward.
-Fridtjof Nansen?
 

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
-George Bernard Shaw
 

The true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good and great evil.
-Geroge R.R. Martin
 

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
-George R.R. Martin
 

Let me give you some advice bastard. Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.
-George R.R. Martin
 

Sometimes I feel like giving up. Then I remember I have a lot of motherfuckers to prove wrong.
-unknown
 

You see, when you take life, you live in fear because deep down you know that some day your life will be taken as well. We all have to reap what we sow [...] There’s no way of avoiding that. When you harm others, you’re really only harming yourself.
It’s simple. If you want good things to happen in your life, you have to be good.
-Goku, dragon ball GT (s3e21)
 

Grades don’t measure intelligence and age doesn’t define maturity.
-unknown
 

No one feels another’s grief. No one understands another’s joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
-Franz Schubert
 

The best way to be happy with someone, is to learn to be happy alone. That way the company will be a matter of choice... and not necessity.
-unknown
 

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
-unknown
 

She said ”don’t get too close. It’s dark inside. It’s where my demons hide.”
And I answered:”Get too close, there is a hell inside of me, it’s where your demons can live”.
-unknown
 

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.
-Helen Keller
 

Actually, I just woke up one day and decided I didn’t want to feel like that anymore, or ever again. So I changed.
Just like that.
-unknown
 

Dare you take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?
-Inception
 

You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery and I promise you, something great will come of it.
-unknown
 

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
-Salvador Dali
 

The only thing you fear is the unreality that you yourself have invented.
-Byron Katie
 

When you believe that your problem is caused by someone or something else, you become... your own victim.
-Byron Katie
 

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
-Isaac Asimov
 

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ’eureka!’ but ’that’s funny...’
-Isaac Asimov
 

Being honest may not get you many friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.
-John Lennon
 

All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.
-the Joker
 

In a hundred years from now, everyone who’s living on this planet will be dead. So its inconsequential really, all the shit that you talk, all the bullshit that you stand for. It’s more important what you’re ready to build, what you’re ready to pass down to your children, what you’re ready to create.
-Felipe Andres Coronel AKA Immortal Technique
 

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-Steve Jobs
 

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
-John F. Kennedy
 

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.
-Mark Z Danielewski
 

Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.
-Paulo Coelho
 

If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.
-Lao Tzu
 

You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.
-Abraham Lincoln
 

Average human life expectancy is 80 years. Stop basking in the glow of other people’s lives and start living your own.
-unknown
 

Love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
-unknown
 

I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
 

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. and you refuse to do it because you are afraid... You refuse to do it because you want to live longer... You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
 

In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.
-Mitch Albom
 

Admirer: Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?
Mozart: A symphony is a very complex musical form. Perhaps you should begin with some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony.
Admirer: But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old.
Mozart: Yes, but I never asked anybody how.
 

I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.
-Neil Gaiman
 

I’m not upset that you lied to me - I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
-Nietzche
 

I’d rather have a life of ’oh wells’ than a life of ’what ifs’.
-unknown
 

Comparison is te thief of joy.
-Theodore Roosvelt
 

The ones who say ”you can’t” and ”you won’t” are probably the ones scared that ”you will”.
-unknown
 

If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission.
-unknown
 

People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love once shared wasn’t true and real. It simply just means that sometimes when people grow, they grow apart.
-500 days of summer
 

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ”It’s not where you take things from-it’s where you take them to.”
-Jim Jarmusch
 

Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.
-anonymous
 

If you’re going to be weird, be confident about it.
-unknown
 

You know what your problem is? You’re smart. Too smart. You over think, because your mind moves at a million miles a minute. You’re sad, because you’re not fooled by the world like everyone else. You don’t get along with most people, because they just don’t look at things the way you do. You think you’re dumb, because you’re smart enough to know you don’t know everything. Your problem is you’re too smart. And that’s not a problem at all.
-unknown
 

Do not be angry with the rain. It simply does not know how to fall upwards.
-Bladimir Nabokov
 

Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.
-Rene Descartes
 

No man ever steps in the same river twice for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
-unknown
 

Wise decisions require knowledge. Wisdom and intelligence are related, but they do not affect each other. Haven’t we seen in history that geniuses did not necessarily live a happy life? Wisdom and intelligence are different. People must realize this truth.
-Sage Moruo
 

I love those who can smile in trouble...
-Leonardo da Vinci
 

Don’t make decisions when you’re angry. Don’t make promises when you’re happy.
-unknown
 

I’ve reached that age where my brain went from ”you probably shouldn’t say that” to ”what the hell, let’s see what happens”.
-unknown
 

I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
-Stephen Hawking, when asked about his I.Q.
 

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.
-Stephen King
 

No matter how much you jump and dance, the last two drops are in your pants.
-Stephen King

 

The strongest drug that exists for a human is another human being.
-unknown
 

If you stumble make it part of the dance.
-unknown
 

Only great minds can afford a simple style.
-Stendhal
 

We’ll never be ready, that’s the whole point. Nobody’s ever ready for anything. You either just do it or you don’t... And up until now I’ve only been not doing it.
-Super
 

Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.
-Christopher Hitchens
 

Sometimes we waste too much time to think about someone who doesn’t even think about us for a second.
-Wiz Khalifa
 

It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
 

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
-Vincent Van Gogh
 

If I’ve learned anything from video games it is that when you meet enemies it means you are going in the right direction.
-unknown
 

The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap. I promise you. It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don’t buy it.
-Ashton Kutcher
 

Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.
-Oscar wilde
 

Now, you listen to me. You got the makings of greatness in you - but you got to take the helm and chart your own course. Stick to it, no matter the squalls!
And when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show what you’re made of! Well... I hope I’m there, catching some of the light coming off you that day.
-Long John Silver
 

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.
-Old Zen saying
 

Stop trying to control everything and just let go.
-unknown
 

Know how to accept a compliment. It can be difficult, especially when we’ve been taught from childhood to brush off or downplay things we’re good at. The right answer is ”Thank you.” and a smile. It just makes conversation run so much more smoothly.
-unknown