Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herman Melville

Whatever my fate, I'll go to it laughing.

Henry David Thoreau

I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.

Henry David Thoreau

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

Henry David Thoreau

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.

Henry David Thoreau

The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience.

Henry David Thoreau

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

Jenson Button

My father did everything for me. He was awesome.

Jeffrey Eugenides

I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time traveling. In this life we grow backwards.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.

Jim Elliot

Father, let me be weak that I might loose my clutch on everything temporal. My life, my reputation, my possessions, Lord, let me loose the tension of the grasping hand. Even, Father, would I lose the love of fondling. How often I have released a grasp only to retain what I prized by 'harmless' longing, the fondling touch. Rather, open my hand to received the nail of Calvary, as Christ's was opened- that I, releasing all, might be released, unleashed from all that binds me now. He thought Heaven, yea, equality with God, not a thing to be clutched at. So let me release my grasp.

Jim Elliot

Father, take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar

Jim Elliot

Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.

Jim Gaffigan

I was raised in a family where my father was the first one to go to college.

Jim Gaffigan

Whenever one of my children says, 'Goodnight, Daddy,' I always think to myself, 'You don't mean that.

Jim Gaffigan

There should be a children's song: 'If you're happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad sleep'.

Jim Gaffigan

I usually don't have a burger, a brat, and a steak but it is 4th of July. And I need the energy if I'm gonna start blowin crap up. It's what the founding fathers would want.

Jane Francklyne, born in 1565, had lived for less than a month. She left very little behind. She was buried in the Ecton churchyard, but her father would hardly have paid a carver to engrave so small a stone. If not for the parish register, there would be no record that this Jane Francklyne had ever lived at all. History is what is written and can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by the earth.

Jesse Metcalfe

I'm estranged from my father and that relationship, as a young man, is incredibly important. It's probably responsible for the man I've become.

Jennifer O'Neill

If you go into a relationship expecting someone else to fill you up, you're doomed right off.

Jennifer Lynch

('Eraserhead') may seem like a dark film, but my father and I watch it, and all we do is laugh. It was Disneyland everyday on the set. That's when I fell in love with film.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Possibly the biggest issue, however, is that performance appraisals focus managers attention on precisely the wrong thing: individual people. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, taught a long time ago, company performance often results more from variations in systems than from the individuals doing the work.

Jeffrey Sachs

The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.

Jeff Foxworthy

You might be a redneck if your father encourages you to quit school because Larry has an opening on the lube rack.

Jeff Foxworthy

My wife is so analytical with raising kids, and I am not. My feeling is if they turn out good, then that means I was a good daddy and put a lot of effort into it. If they turn out bad, it means they took after her side of the family.

James Cameron

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make.

James Cameron

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things.

James A. Michener

I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

James A. Garfield

We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.

James A. Baldwin

Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.

James A. Baldwin

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

Jada Pinkett Smith

What makes Will the best father in the world to me is that he's there, not just there in a way that's traditional. The emotional support he offers his children is immeasurable.

Jacqueline Carey

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

Jackie Mason

My father was a very successful businessman, but he was ruined in the stock market crash. A big stockbroker jumped out the window and fell on his pushcart.