Clay Davis > Clay's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“You didn’t come here to talk about that and you’re lyin’ if you say you did. No, you came hoping that we could have a dialogue so that when it was over you could go away with a clear conscience.”
― Mike Billington, Murder in the Rainy Season

“Worse, Lee felt isolated. In Texas he skipped meals with others to avoid “uninteresting men,” wishing he was back by his campfire on the plains eating his meals alone.211 He avoided sharing quarters and found that he “would infinitely prefer my tent to my-self.”212 In a group he felt more alone than out on the prairie, and that “my pleasure is derived from my own thoughts.”
― William C. Davis, Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged

“Notwithstanding our boastful assertions to the world, for nearly a century, that our government was based on the consent of the people, it rests upon force, as much as any government that ever existed. - Robert E. Lee”
― William C. Davis, Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged

“Unprotected by the army, the Mexican peasants were helpless to resist the Apache raiders, with scores carried off into captivity and hundreds more slaughtered. The desert now reclaimed the untilled fields. Cattle, sheep, mules, and goats wandered free only to fall prey to the great packs of wolves and coyotes that trailed the Apache raiding parties just as the raven shadows the predator on his rounds. Skeletons lined the roads, littered the burned haciendas, and were picked clean by scavengers in deserted villages. It was a perfect reign of terror.”
― Paul Andrew Hutton, The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History

“The language of the packers quickly entered the army vocabulary. A skittish, inexperienced young mule had its tail shaved so as to be instantly recognizable to the packers. “Shavetail” soon became the name for every spit-and-polish, greenhorn lieutenant from the East. A”
― Paul Andrew Hutton, The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History

“An oath is a frightening thing when you are prepared to keep it, and I felt it tightening around my soul even as I gave my pledge.”
― Rob S. Rice, The Chronicles of Loquacious, Centaur, of Rhodes

“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

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.”
― Ronald Reagan

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“There are a thousand ways to Wealth, but only one way to Heaven.”
― John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”
― Mother Teresa

“Sea-fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.”
― John Masefield, Sea Fever: Selected Poems

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
― Alfred Hitchcock

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”
― C.S. Lewis

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The state of California itself was now just like me - a free-spirited liberal with a mostly sunny disposition teetering on the edge of financial ruin. (Natalie Teeger)”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out

“Guilt and fear are a kind of rot. It spreads unless it's cleaned. And there's only one way to do that.”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk on the Couch

“I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex