Memorable Lines

Question 1

Gustave Flaubert on importance of routine

Answer 1

Be regular and orderly in your life, so you can be violent and original in your work

Question 2

F Scott Fitzgerald on dark night of the soul

Answer 2

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning

Question 3

Anonymous on what sort of load to ask for

Answer 3

Don’t ask for a light load but rather a strong back

Question 4

William Gibson on the future today

Answer 4

The future is here. It is just unevenly distributed

Question 5

Richard Feynman on fooling yourself

Answer 5

The first principle is you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool

Question 6

Kurt Vonnegut on the golden rule

Answer 6

There’s only one rule I know of: you’ve got to be kind

Question 7

Oscar Wilde on existence vs living

Answer 7

To live is the rarest thing in this world. Most people exist, that is all.

Question 8

Loesje on waiting and the future

Answer 8

The longer you wait for the future the shorter it will be.

Question 9

Dwight L Moody on who you are in the dark

Answer 9

Character is what you are in the dark

Question 10

Mark Twain on taking what does not belong to you

Answer 10

It is better to take what not does belong to you than to let it lie around neglected

Question 11

Anonymous on how a man got to the top of the mountain

Answer 11

Remember when you see a man at the top of the mountain, he did not fall there

Question 12

Frank Sinatra on whatever gets you through the night

Answer 12

I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquillisers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Question 13

Benjamin Franklin on lost time

Answer 13

Lost time is never found again

Question 14

Pablo Picasso on what art is

Answer 14

Art is theft

Question 15

George Matthew Allen on value of many interests

Answer 15

People with many interests live, not only longer, but happier

Question 16

Ralph Waldo Emerson on what every artist is at the start

Answer 16

Every artist was first an amateur

Question 17

Unknown on results or excuses

Answer 17

You can have results or you can have your excuses. You cannot have both

Question 18

George Burns on looking towards the future

Answer 18

I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life

Question 19

Oscar Wilde on where we are and what we look at

Answer 19

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

Question 20

Samuel Beckett on what the particular contains

Answer 20

In the particular is contained the universal

Question 21

Aldous Huxley on what ceilings become

Answer 21

Every ceiling, wheb reached, becomes a floor one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right

Question 22

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on knowing

Answer 22

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Question 23

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on what our goals need to be

Answer 23

It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise

Question 24

Mother Teresa on casting a stone

Answer 24

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples

Question 25

Benjamin Franklin on net worth

Answer 25

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

Question 26

Ronald Reagan on hard work

Answer 26

I've heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance

Question 27

Sue Grafton on that small voice

Answer 27

Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what's important and what's not

Question 28

John Steinbeck on value of winter

Answer 28

What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness

Question 29

Charles Darwin on what ignorance begets

Answer 29

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge

Question 30

F Scott Fitzgerald on the direction out boat is heading

Answer 30

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

Question 31

Ursula K. le Guin on walls

Answer 31

The worst walls are the ones you put there—you build yourself. Those are the high ones, the thick ones, the ones with no doors

Question 32

Henry David Thoreau on good things

Answer 32

All good things are wild and free

Question 33

Socrates on the unexamined life

Answer 33

The unexamined life is not worth living

Question 34

Antonii Porchia on straight lines

Answer 34

Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life

Question 35

Abraham Maslow on having a toolkit

Answer 35

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail

Question 36

Oscar Wilde on moderation

Answer 36

Everything in moderation including moderation

Question 37

Herman Melville on what lies ahead

Answer 37

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.

Question 38

Napoleon Hill on a winning combination

Answer 38

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success

Question 39

Oscar Wilde on who people are

Answer 39

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Question 40

Mike Tyson on having a plan

Answer 40

Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face

Question 41

Louis Armstrong on what happens to Musicians

Answer 41

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them

Question 42

Mark Twain on Courage

Answer 42

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear

Question 43

Yogi Berra on theory

Answer 43

n theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not

Question 44

George Orwell on what liberty is

Answer 44

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear

Question 45

Sigmund Freud on the struggle years

Answer 45

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful

Question 46

Michaelangeo on mastery

Answer 46

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all

Question 47

Lao Tzu on time

Answer 47

Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to'.

Question 48

Mark Twain on what makes life worth living

Answer 48

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life

Question 49

Haruki Murakami on time

Answer 49

Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.

Question 50

Leonard Bernstein on acheiving great things

Answer 50

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.

Question 51

Tennessee Williams on security

Answer 51

Security is a kind of death, I think

Question 52

Aristotle on mark of an educated mind

Answer 52

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

Question 53

Aristotle on the educated mind

Answer 53

It is the mark if an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought withiut accepting it

Question 54

Albert Camus on what we find in winter

Answer 54

In the depths of winter, I finally learned within me there lay an invincible summer