Sean Curtis > Sean's Quotes

“You know how it is, when you're up to nothin no good's usually next.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“..scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”
― Dr David Livingstone

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion;respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,even a stranger, when in a lonely place.Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weepand pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
― Chief Tecumseh

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.”
― Siegfried Sassoon, Poems

“May the revolution be swift and brutal.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.”
― Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

“Discipline equals freedom.”
― Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

“Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I imagined him then walking the few feet to the hilltop, where he had bedded down so many times next his life partner, and lying down to rest. As he slowly drifted off to sleep, I would like to think that the scent from that tree triggered a picture. If so, then the last thing in 21’s mind as he lost consciousness for the final time was an image of 42.”
― Rick McIntyre, The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack

“[Excerpt from Brereton Report] We embarked on this Inquiry with the hope that we would be able to report that the rumours of war crimes were without substance. None of us desired the outcome to which we have come. We are all diminished by it.”
― Mark Willacy, Rogue Forces: An Explosive Insiders' Account of Australian SAS War Crimes in Afghanistan

“Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.”
― William Shakespeare

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend...”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“If your heart beats like a drum, and your legs a little wet, it’s because the Reaper’s come to collect a little debt.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“I will love you until the sun dies. And when it does, I will love you in the darkness.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause. ”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Brothers, sisters, till the last Woe that this has come to pass, By your grave, I shall weep For it was I who made you sleep.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Welcome to the island of misfit toys”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden