Chapter 5 - You are reading Chapter 5 right now!
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Chapter 5

Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake. [1]

William Wordsworth

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. [2]

Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. [3]

Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything has been figured out, except how to live. [4]

Umberto Eco

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. [5]

John Ruskin

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. [6]

Gabriel García Márquez

Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability. [7]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness. [8]

Bill Maher

Men are only as loyal as their options. [9]

Marcel Proust

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. [10]

Christopher Hitchens

I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged. [11]

John Dewey

We only think when we are confronted with problems. [12]

Flannery O'Connor

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. [13]

Geoffrey Chaucer

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. [14]

J.M. Barrie

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another. [15]

Alfred Tennyson

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. [16]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. [17]

Adolf Hitler

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future. [18]

Leo Tolstoy

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. [19]

Oscar Wilde

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. [20]

Henry James

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect. [21]

Adam Smith

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches. [22]

Joe Rogan

Never stay in a bad marriage, and don't hang around with psycho coke fiends. [23]

Thomas Sowell

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. [24]

Charles Darwin

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone. [25]

Richard Dawkins

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility. [26]

Henry David Thoreau

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. [27]

Emil Cioran

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth. [28]

Ernest Hemingway

Courage is grace under pressure. [29]

Winston Churchill

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. [30]

Albert Einstein

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. [31]

E.O. Wilson

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. [32]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen. [33]

John Locke

What worries you, masters you. [34]

Eudora Welty

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation. [35]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness. [36]

Richard Feynman

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there. [37]

James Joyce

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. [38]

Albert Camus

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. [39]

William Shakespeare

If music be the food of love, play on. [40]

Victor Hugo

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. [41]

George W. Bush

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. [42]

Gore Vidal

President. One hopes it is the same half. [43]

John Steinbeck

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. [44]

Virginia Woolf

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. [45]

James Madison

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. [46]

Thomas Paine

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. [47]

Henri Poincare

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. [48]

Jane Austen

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. [49]

William F. Buckley Jr.

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance. [50]

Stephen Hawking

I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers. [51]

Walt Whitman

I celebrate myself, and sing myself. [52]

Arthur Conan Doyle

O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. [53]

John Milton

He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king. [54]

Immanuel Kant

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them. [55]

Jonathan Swift

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. [56]

Aristotle

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. [57]

Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. [58]

Franz Kafka

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. [59]

Carl Sagan

We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. [60]

Voltaire

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. [61]

Denis Diderot

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. [62]

Noam Chomsky

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. [63]

Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said. [64]

Arthur Schopenhauer

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom. [65]

Frederick the Great

Rogues, would you live forever? [66]

Gustave Flaubert

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it. [67]

Bertrand Russell

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. [68]

Edgar Allan Poe

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. [69]

David Hume

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. [70]

John Berger

Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon. [71]

James Anthony Froude

In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. [72]

André Malraux

There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman. [73]

André Gide

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason. [74]

Douglas Adams

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. [75]

George Eliot

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. [76]

Toni Morrison

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. [77]

George Orwell

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. [78]

William Faulkner

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. [79]

Elizabeth I of England
- 145 ↩
God forgive you, but I never can. [80]

Jack Kerouac

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world. [81]

Baruch Spinoza

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. [82]

John Stuart Mill

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. [83]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. [84]

Isaac Newton

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction. [85]

Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. [86]

José Saramago

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. [87]

William James

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. [88]

Dante Alighieri

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. [89]

George Bernard Shaw

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. [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 ↩︎