favorite quotes?

"Death has to win only once, but life has to win every day."

If I keep a green bough in my heart

a singing bird will come

--Chinese proverb

Still, it is proper when young to strive for gigantic perfection that doesn't make sense...

Long ago when I had had a child sickness and nobody could tell what it was or how to treat it, my mother put me outside in a bed with mosquito netting over it, and I lay there watching mountains until they made me well.

It is surprising how much our souls are alike, at least in the presence of mountains. For all of us, mountains turn into images after a short time and the images turn true. Gold-tossed waves change into the purple backs of monsters, and so forth. Always something out of the moving deep, and nearly always oceanic. Never a lake, never the sky. But no matter what images I began with, when I watched long enough the mountains turned into dreams, and still do, and it works the other way around - often, waking from dreams, I know I have been in the mountains, and I know they have been moving - sometimes advancing threateningly, sometimes creeping hesitantly, sometimes receding endlessly. Both mountains and dreams.

“There is no education in the second kick of a mule.”

Still, it is proper when young to strive for gigantic perfection that doesn't make sense...

When someone yells "duck" do it, then ask why

you don't lose your girlfriend, you just lose your turn.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

business education distorts students into “critters with lopsided brains, icy hearts, and shrunken souls." -Hal Leavitt

“By encouraging us to expect the worst in others it brings out the worst in us: dreading the role of the chump, we are often loath to heed our nobler instincts.”

I wish I had consciously intentionally somehow - through a mentor's guidance, say- made it a mantra in my own life from 2nd grade inwards

nothing is nearly as hard as the easiest pitch on the route.