Quotes

On Self-knowledge

Gnothi seauton. (Know yourself.)
- inscribed in gold letters over the portico of the temple at Delphi

Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey.
- Malcolm De Chazal

All types of knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge.
- Bruce Lee in "Lost" Interview, Dec 09 '71

On Creativity

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
- Vincent Van Gogh

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
- Vincent Van Gogh

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Albert Einstein

Design is a personal activity and springs from the creative impulse of an individual. Group design or design by committee, although occasionally useful, deprives the designer of the distinct pleasure of personal accomplishment and self-realization.
- Paul Rand

On Happiness

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.
- Doug Larson

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
- J.S. Mill

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
- Robert Frost

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Tis nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
- William Shakespeare

Miscellaneous

Everything you need for a novel happens at about dog height.
- Garrison Keillor, News from Lake Wobegon, August 4, 2007

The palest ink is better than the sharpest memory.
- a Chinese proverb

the wish was not father to the thought.
- Joseph Schumpeter

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.
- Confucius