Chapter 4 - You are reading Chapter 4 right now!
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Chapter 4

Friedrich Nietzsche

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. [1]

William Wordsworth

For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity. [2]

Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. [3]

Jean-Paul Sartre

Life begins on the other side of despair. [4]

Umberto Eco

Translation is the art of failure. [5]

John Ruskin

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. [6]

Gabriel García Márquez

I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him. [7]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. [8]

Bill Maher

The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs. [9]

Marcel Proust

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey. [10]

Christopher Hitchens

Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it. [11]

John Dewey

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. [12]

Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness. [13]

Geoffrey Chaucer

Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed. [14]

J.M. Barrie

Life is a long lesson in humility. [15]

Alfred Tennyson

Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be happier. [16]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. [17]

Adolf Hitler

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. [18]

Leo Tolstoy

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. [19]

Oscar Wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken [20]

Henry James

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. [21]

Adam Smith

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality... for one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor. [22]

Joe Rogan

If you can lie, you can act, and if you can lie to crazy girlfriends, you can act under pressure. [23]

Thomas Sowell

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. [24]

Charles Darwin

I have called this principle, by which, each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. [25]

Richard Dawkins

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. [26]

Henry David Thoreau

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. [27]

Emil Cioran

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh. [28]

Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. [29]

Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. [30]

Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. [31]

E.O. Wilson

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong. [32]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love those who yearn for the impossible. [33]

John Locke

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him. [34]

Eudora Welty

To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose. [35]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. [36]

Richard Feynman

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. [37]

James Joyce

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. [38]

Albert Camus

What is a rebel? A man who says no. [39]

William Shakespeare

Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. [40]

Victor Hugo

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. [41]

George W. Bush

Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. [42]

Gore Vidal

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. [43]

John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. [44]

Virginia Woolf

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. [45]

James Madison

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. [46]

Thomas Paine

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. [47]

Henri Poincare

The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so. [48]

Jane Austen

Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort. [49]

William F. Buckley Jr.

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it. [50]

Stephen Hawking

Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. [51]

Walt Whitman

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, [52]

Arthur Conan Doyle

Above our life we love a steadfast friend. [53]

John Milton

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. [54]

Immanuel Kant

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man. [55]

Jonathan Swift

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. [56]

Aristotle

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead. [57]

Mark Twain

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. [58]

Franz Kafka

The meaning of life is that it stops. [59]

Carl Sagan

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. [60]

Voltaire

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. [61]

Denis Diderot

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness. [62]

Noam Chomsky

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism. [63]

Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. [64]

Arthur Schopenhauer

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame. [65]

Frederick the Great

It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches. [66]

Gustave Flaubert

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. [67]

Bertrand Russell

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. [68]

Edgar Allan Poe

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. [69]

David Hume

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. [70]

John Berger

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. [71]

James Anthony Froude
Human improvement is from within outward. [72]

André Malraux

Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only. [73]

André Gide

The color of truth is gray. [74]

Douglas Adams

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. [75]

George Eliot

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. [76]

Toni Morrison

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. [77]

George Orwell

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. [78]

William Faulkner

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it. [79]

Elizabeth I of England
If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all. [80]

Jack Kerouac

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. [81]

Baruch Spinoza

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many. [82]

John Stuart Mill

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. [83]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done. [84]

Isaac Newton

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me. [85]

Charles Dickens

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. [86]

José Saramago

Americans have discovered fear. [87]

William James

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. [88]

Dante Alighieri

Beauty awakens the soul to act. [89]

George Bernard Shaw

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them. [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 ↩︎