Quotes on Ifs

Going down (descending), I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yard on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.

If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.

If we truly worship God, acknowledging and adoring his infinite worth, we find ourselves impelled to make him known to others, in order that they may worship him too. Thus worship leads to witness, and witness in its turn to worship, in a perpetual circle.

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you.

Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change.

I'm going to college. I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star.

A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

Most people search high and wide for the key to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lies within.

This truth may be unfashionable, unpalatable, no doubt unpopular, but, if it is the truth, the story of mankind shows that war was universal and unceasing for millions of years before armaments were invented or armies organized. Indeed, the lucid intervals of peace and order only occurred in human history after armaments in the hands of strong governments have come into being, and civilization in every age has been nursed only in cradles guarded by superior weapons and superior discipline.

...we shall incur no slight injury, but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumults, so as to draw us away from what is good? Let us cleave, therefore, to those who cultivate peace with godliness?

Do what's right. Be on time, be polite, and be honest; remain free from drugs; and if you have any questions, get out your Bible. 2. Do your best. Mediocrity is unacceptable when you are capable of doing better. 3. Treat others as you want to be treated. Practice love and understanding.

If you were lost for America, there is nobody who could keep the army and the revolution [going] for six months.

Is suffering really necessary?_x000D_ _x000D_ Yes and no._x000D_ _x000D_ If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you, no humility, no compassion.

If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is 'the quiet acceptance of what is'.

There is nothing absolute and final. If everything were ironclad, all the rules absolute and everything structured so no paradox or irony existed, you couldn't move. One could say that man sneaks through the crack where paradox exists.

Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.

The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.

If you just work on stuff that you like and you're passionate about, you don't have to have a master plan with how things will play out.