Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sterling Hayden

What does a person need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by.

Steve Almond

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

Stephen Elliott

That’s why you have to write your book right now, if that’s what you want to do. If you wait until you have the time, and the security, you might not want to do it. You’re in a race against your own enthusiasm. Don’t put it off because someone told you it’s never too late. That’s the worst lie. It’s never too late today, but it’s often too late tomorrow.

Stephen Crane

The word is clear only to the kind who on peak or plain, from dark northern ice-fields to the hot wet jungles, through all wine and want, through lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, are governed by the unknown gods, and though each man knows the law, no man may give tongue to it.

Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;Round and round they sped.I was disturbed at this;I accosted the man."It is futile," I said,"You can never-""You lie," he cried,And ran on.

Stephen Crane

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dinghy one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience, which is never at sea in a dinghy.

Stephen Crane

Swift blazing flag of the regiment,Eagle with crest of red and gold,These men were born to drill and die.Point for them the virtue of slaughter,Make plain to them the excellence of killingAnd a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Stephen Crane

Half of tradition is a lie.

Stephen Covey

Once we are self-aware, we must choose purposes and principles to live by; otherwise the vacuum will be filled, and we will lose our self-awareness and become like groveling animals who live primarily for survival and propagation. People who exist on that level aren't living; they are being lived. They are reacting, unaware of the unique endowments that lie dormant and undeveloped within.

Stephen Covey

If my sense of security lies in my reputation or in the things I have, my life will be in a constant state of threat and jeopardy-a fear that these possessions may be lost, stolen, or devalued. If I'm in the presence of someone of greater net worth, fame, or status, I feel inferior. If I'm in the presence of someone of lesser net worth, fame or status, I feel superior. My sense of self-worth constantly fluctu-ates. I don't have any sense of constancy, anchorage, or persistent selfhood. I am constantly trying to protect and insure my assets, properties, securities, position, or reputation.

Stephen Covey

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

Stephen Covey

Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us.

Stephen Covey

When you engage in a work that taps your talent and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.

Stephane Mallarme

O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.

Stephane Mallarme

I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.

Stephane Mallarme

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Viktor E. Frankl

Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Viktor E. Frankl

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer... his unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.

Viktor E. Frankl

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

Val Kilmer

I never had a business plan. I did, actually - I'm lying. My business plan was to get lucky, and I did; that was great. And then my second business plan was to get lucky again, and there, I faltered.

Vaclav Havel

A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

Vaclav Havel

Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.

Vaclav Havel

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.

Vaclav Havel

The experience I'm talking about has given me one certainty: the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in human consciousness, nothing will change for the better, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed will be unavoidable.

Vaclav Havel

It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly.

Vaclav Havel

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Vaclav Havel

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

Vaclav Havel

When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.

V. S. Naipaul

If it was Europe that gave us on the coast some idea of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie.

V. S. Naipaul

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

V. S. Naipaul

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Usain Bolt

I would rather be lying in a bed than changing one.

Usain Bolt

Women always find you out when you lie. Always. No matter what, they always find out. They're like detectives.