Chapter 6 - You are reading Chapter 6 right now!
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Chapter 6

Friedrich Nietzsche

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. [1]

William Wordsworth

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar. [2]

Samuel Beckett

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on. [3]

Jean-Paul Sartre

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk. [4]

Umberto Eco

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed. [5]

John Ruskin

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one. [6]

Gabriel García Márquez

The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast. [7]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To live without Hope is to Cease to live. [8]

Bill Maher

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease. [9]

Marcel Proust

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees. [10]

Christopher Hitchens

I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor. [11]

John Dewey

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. [12]

Flannery O'Connor

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. [13]

Geoffrey Chaucer

Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas, And yet he semed bisier than he was. [14]

J.M. Barrie

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. [15]

Alfred Tennyson

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever. [16]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it. [17]

Adolf Hitler

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few. [18]

Leo Tolstoy

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. [19]

Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. [20]

Henry James

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? [21]

Adam Smith

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. [22]

Joe Rogan

The audience changes every night. You're the same person. You have to speak your mind and do the stuff that you think is funny and makes you laugh. [23]

Thomas Sowell

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. [24]

Charles Darwin

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. [25]

Richard Dawkins

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture. [26]

Henry David Thoreau

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. [27]

Emil Cioran

Word — that invisible dagger. [28]

Ernest Hemingway

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. [29]

Winston Churchill

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. [30]

Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. [31]

E.O. Wilson

Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals. [32]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is worth more than this day. [33]

John Locke

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. [34]

Eudora Welty

Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations. [35]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. [36]

Richard Feynman

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. [37]

James Joyce

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day. [38]

Albert Camus

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. [39]

William Shakespeare

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. [40]

Victor Hugo

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. [41]

George W. Bush

I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. [42]

Gore Vidal

Never have children, only grandchildren. [43]

John Steinbeck

No one wants advice - only corroboration. [44]

Virginia Woolf

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. [45]

James Madison

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. [46]

Thomas Paine

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. [47]

Henri Poincare

Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. [48]

Jane Austen

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn? [49]

William F. Buckley Jr.

Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out. [50]

Stephen Hawking

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. [51]

Walt Whitman

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough. [52]

Arthur Conan Doyle

Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position. [53]

John Milton

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. [54]

Immanuel Kant

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. [55]

Jonathan Swift

No wise man ever wished to be younger. [56]

Aristotle

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. [57]

Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. [58]

Franz Kafka

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. [59]

Carl Sagan

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. [60]

Voltaire

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. [61]

Denis Diderot

Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine. [62]

Noam Chomsky

Education is a system of imposed ignorance. [63]

Benjamin Franklin

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. [64]

Arthur Schopenhauer

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal. [65]

Frederick the Great

My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please. [66]

Gustave Flaubert

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. [67]

Bertrand Russell

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. [68]

Edgar Allan Poe

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. [69]

David Hume

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. [70]

John Berger

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream. [71]

James Anthony Froude

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self. [72]

André Malraux

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself. [73]

André Gide

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable. [74]

Douglas Adams

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others… [75]

George Eliot

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker. [76]

Toni Morrison

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it. [77]

George Orwell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. [78]

William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. [79]

Elizabeth I of England

I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman. [80]

Jack Kerouac

My witness is the empty sky. [81]

Baruch Spinoza

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. [82]

John Stuart Mill

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. [83]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. [84]

Isaac Newton

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought. [85]

Charles Dickens

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. [86]

José Saramago

The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others. [87]

William James

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. [88]

Dante Alighieri

All hope abandon, ye who enter here! [89]

George Bernard Shaw

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. [90]

In Order of Appearance

Each chapter features the same authors in the same order! Different quotes.


  1. Friedrich Nietzsche - 12 ↩︎

  2. William Wordsworth - 63 ↩︎

  3. Samuel Beckett - 28 ↩︎

  4. Jean-Paul Sartre - 202 ↩︎

  5. Umberto Eco - 390 ↩︎

  6. John Ruskin - 212 ↩︎

  7. Gabriel García Márquez - 24 ↩︎

  8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13 ↩︎

  9. Bill Maher - 11 ↩︎

  10. Marcel Proust - 54 ↩︎

  11. Christopher Hitchens - 1 ↩︎

  12. John Dewey - 47 ↩︎

  13. Flannery O'Connor - 154 ↩︎

  14. Geoffrey Chaucer - 162 ↩︎

  15. J.M. Barrie - 186 ↩︎

  16. Alfred Tennyson - 73 ↩︎

  17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 205 ↩︎

  18. Adolf Hitler - 65 ↩︎

  19. Leo Tolstoy - 25 ↩︎

  20. Oscar Wilde - 56 ↩︎

  21. Henry James - 181 ↩︎

  22. Adam Smith - 19 ↩︎

  23. Joe Rogan - 46 ↩︎

  24. Thomas Sowell - 383 ↩︎

  25. Charles Darwin - 114 ↩︎

  26. Richard Dawkins - 2 ↩︎

  27. Henry David Thoreau - 180 ↩︎

  28. Emil Cioran - 146 ↩︎

  29. Ernest Hemingway - 22 ↩︎

  30. Winston Churchill - 400 ↩︎

  31. Albert Einstein - 69 ↩︎

  32. E.O. Wilson - 142 ↩︎

  33. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 15 ↩︎

  34. John Locke - 49 ↩︎

  35. Eudora Welty - 150 ↩︎

  36. F. Scott Fitzgerald - 152 ↩︎

  37. Richard Feynman - 58 ↩︎

  38. James Joyce - 14 ↩︎

  39. Albert Camus - 9 ↩︎

  40. William Shakespeare - 8 ↩︎

  41. Victor Hugo - 60 ↩︎

  42. George W. Bush - 167 ↩︎

  43. Gore Vidal - 170 ↩︎

  44. John Steinbeck - 215 ↩︎

  45. Virginia Woolf - 393 ↩︎

  46. James Madison - 193 ↩︎

  47. Thomas Paine - 382 ↩︎

  48. Henri Poincare - 179 ↩︎

  49. Jane Austen - 44 ↩︎

  50. William F. Buckley Jr. - 397 ↩︎

  51. Stephen Hawking - 59 ↩︎

  52. Walt Whitman - 394 ↩︎

  53. Arthur Conan Doyle - 88 ↩︎

  54. John Milton - 50 ↩︎

  55. Immanuel Kant - 42 ↩︎

  56. Jonathan Swift - 52 ↩︎

  57. Aristotle - 31 ↩︎

  58. Mark Twain - 26 ↩︎

  59. Franz Kafka - 23 ↩︎

  60. Carl Sagan - 20 ↩︎

  61. Voltaire - 61 ↩︎

  62. Denis Diderot - 36 ↩︎

  63. Noam Chomsky - 4 ↩︎

  64. Benjamin Franklin - 99 ↩︎

  65. Arthur Schopenhauer - 91 ↩︎

  66. Frederick the Great - 158 ↩︎

  67. Gustave Flaubert - 175 ↩︎

  68. Bertrand Russell - 10 ↩︎

  69. Edgar Allan Poe - 21 ↩︎

  70. David Hume - 35 ↩︎

  71. John Berger - 206 ↩︎

  72. James Anthony Froude - 190 ↩︎

  73. André Malraux - 76 ↩︎

  74. André Gide - 75 ↩︎

  75. Douglas Adams - 37 ↩︎

  76. George Eliot - 164 ↩︎

  77. Toni Morrison - 387 ↩︎

  78. George Orwell - 40 ↩︎

  79. William Faulkner - 62 ↩︎

  80. Elizabeth I of England - 145 ↩︎

  81. Jack Kerouac - 187 ↩︎

  82. Baruch Spinoza - 98 ↩︎

  83. John Stuart Mill - 51 ↩︎

  84. Ludwig Wittgenstein - 53 ↩︎

  85. Isaac Newton - 43 ↩︎

  86. Charles Dickens - 6 ↩︎

  87. José Saramago - 219 ↩︎

  88. William James - 398 ↩︎

  89. Dante Alighieri - 127 ↩︎

  90. George Bernard Shaw - 163 ↩︎