One wide-awake persistent enemy may be worth twenty friends. Friends point out all the good things you do. You know all about that. Your enemies point out your mistakes. Get yourself a first-class enemy, cultivate him, and when you achieve success th...
In order to create something new, to invent a new product or idea, you need to anticipate where things are headed. That requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly understand the origins of past ideas, lea...
Many people look at their past and bemoan their mistakes. Those errors in judgment, behavior, hurting others, and the wrong decisions may be what consumes them now. It does not have to be that way, for recovering from a traumatic situation is all a m...
None of us are bad people. We float around and we run across each other and we learn about ourselves, and we make mistakes and we do great things. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves, we make others happy and we please ourselves. We can and should forg...
I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically...
For femmes, that evolving feminist thought reacquainted us with something we kind of knew already: men and women might mistake us for “just girls” when they see our makeup and fashions, but we were/are actually guerrilla warriors, fighting underc...
I’ve said for years — ever since I figured out how to write Goblin Hero — that it’s important to give yourself permission to write crap. Perfection is the destroyer of art. It’s paralyzing. Art, whether it’s writing or painting or anythin...
[after Schindler pulls him off a train bound for the work camps] Itzhak Stern: Somehow I left my work card at home. I tried to explain to them that it was a mistake, but... I'm sorry. It was stupid! Oskar Schindler: What if I got here five minutes la...
Harry Terwilliger: [after Wild Bill causes havoc and nearly kills Dean] We thought he was doped. Didn't we all think we was doped? Paul Edgecomb: You didn't ask? [Terwilliger shakes his head] Paul Edgecomb: Well I don't think that's a mistake you'll ...
Phil Wenneck: [after seeing the ring that Stu plans on giving Melissa] What the hell is that? Stu Price: What's it look like? Phil Wenneck: If it's what I think it is, it's a big fucking mistake! Doug Billings: She's not that bad. Phil Wenneck: Doug,...
[Dumbledore has arrived at Harry's trial, which was moved up] Cornelius Fudge: Oh! Albus... I see you got our notice about the time change of the hearing... Albus Dumbledore: I must have missed it; but by a happy mistake, I arrived at the Ministry th...
Tiffany: Why did you order raisin bran? Pat: Why did you order tea? Tiffany: Because you ordered raisin bran. Pat: I ordered raisin bran because I didn't want there to be any mistaking it for a date. Tiffany: It can still be a date if you order raisi...
The things that I have said when I was young and curious about whatever the subject matter was, I respect those - those are growing pains. Even if you make mistakes, I go back to those things, my not-so-great moments because those are my truest momen...
I had no idea how difficult Sondheim's music would be. All through the rehearsals, I kept flubbing. There were so many tempo changes. I could never get through the opening number without any mistakes. One day, I went up to Hal Prince and offered to l...
Both my grandmothers had upright pianos, and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up, and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the ...
A word that turns up in TNR’s literary pieces is “tasteless. “ They use it in the same way you might reprove a toilet joke at the dinner table or around relatives. But with them it takes on moral weight. It’s a very damaging mistake: the idea...
We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God'...
who did I think we were. who did I think I could make you. this is the oldest mistake, to confuse wanting with magic. silence is the undoing of every spell, and we are experts in the unsaid. even now, I forget to put us in past tense. as if the air i...
The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speech...
On one hand, we know that everything happens for a reason, and there are no mistakes or coincidences. On the other hand, we learn that we can never give up, knowing that with the right tools and energy, we can reverse any decree or karma. So, which i...
At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape...
