Stephen Kiprono > Stephen's Quotes

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
― Tennessee Williams, Conversations With Tennessee Williams

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
― Doris Lessing

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
― Plato

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Echoes of Life and Death

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley, Invictus

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals Of Ralph Waldo Emerson, With Annotations - 1841-1844

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“Law is made by the winner to preserve victory over the loser.”
― Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident], Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
― Francesco Petrarca

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”
― Petrarch

“Libri quosdam ad scientiam, quosdam ad insaniam deduxere. (Books have led some to knowledge and some to madness.)”
― Francesco Petrarca

“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”
― Francesco Petrarch

“Aurum, argentum, gemmae, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pietae tabulae, phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.”
― Petrarch

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.”
― Barbara Bush