He always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Quotes from What Rich People Know & Desperately Want to Keep a Secret
Adaptation from Desiderata:
- Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.
- As far as possible be on good terms with all people. Speak the truth quietly and clearly and listen carefully to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have a life story.
- Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. Never compare yourself to others, you may become either vain or bitter, for there will always be greater and lesser persons to you.
- Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it’s a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
- Exercise caution in your business affairs, as the world is full of trickery.
- Be true to yourself, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical or blinded by love, for in the face of aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
- Find somebody to love, love what you do and always be excited about your future. When you find love give nothing but love, yet demand none in return.
- Be a true friend, as being a friend is a gift you give to yourself.
- Take kindly to the passing of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth, but never your health.
- Nurture your strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune, but do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born unnecessarily out of fatigue and loneliness.
- Spend your time wisely, and only in the company of those that matter, as time is the only true currency you have.
- Beyond a wholesome discipline, be kind and gentle with yourself. Remember you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right and a special purpose in being here. Whether it is clear to you or not, the universe is unfolding as it should.
- There for be at peace with yourself and your god, whatever you conceive it to be. Whatever your labours and aspirations, keep peace with your souls in the noisy confusion of life.
- With all it’s shame, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
- Be cheerful, be happy.
Words of the Future from Samir Dave
If you take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and creating a new definition, you can get hilarious results. Here are a few gems:
- Cashtration: The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
- Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
- Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.
- Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
- Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
- Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
- Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
- Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
- Glibido: All talk and no action.
- Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
Also alternate meanings for common words:
- Coffee: the person upon whom one coughs.
- Flabbergasted: appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
- Willy-Nilly: impotent.
- Negligent: absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
- Lymph: to walk with a lisp.
Here are a few more definitions, not found in your run-of-the-mill dictionary:
- Egotist: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.
- Toothache: The pain that drives you to extraction.
- Inflation: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.
- Wrinkles: Something other people have. I have character lines.
‘They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.
I can’t even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain’t,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be…
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.
$500 sneakers for what?? And they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2?? Where were you when he was 12?? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol?? And where is the father?? Or who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from??
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap……. and all of them are in jail. Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different ‘husbands’ — or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard. We cannot blame the white people any longer.’
Dr. William Henry ‘Bill’ Cosby, Jr., Ed.D
Special big whoop to Ludwig van B, the man loved his music! Thought this was an appropriate way to jumpstart your quotes. xx
- If I ever die of a heart attack, I hope it will be from playing my stereo too loud. Anonymous
- Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name
- Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Ludwig van Beethoven
- Without music life would be a mistake. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
- Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Berthold Auerbach
- All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! Thomas Carlyle
- And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done
- He who sings scares away his woes. Cervantes
- There’s music in the sighing of a reed; There’s music in the gushing of a rill; There’s music in all things, if men had ears: Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. Lord Byron
- If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith
- I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. H.A. Overstreet
- My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. Edward Elgar
- Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. Charlie Parker
- Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. Henry Ward Beecher
- Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. Ludwig van Beethoven
- You are the music while the music lasts. T.S. Eliot (This is SO you and Ria!)
- You can’t possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh and go slow. Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket
- The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven’t got the joke yet. Oliver Herford
- Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. Victor Hugo
- There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleased; With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear; Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies. William Cowper
- Truly to sing, that is a different breath. Rainer Maria Rilke (SATSANG!)
- Music is the shorthand of emotion. Leo Tolstoy
- There is no truer truth obtainable, By Man than comes of music. Robert Browning
- Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific. Aaron Copland
- What passion cannot music raise and quell! John Dryden
- The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. Leonard Bernstein
- Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory Percy Bysshe Shelley
- A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. Benny Green
- The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides! Artur Schnabel
- Rock music in its lyrics often talks ahead of the time about what’s going on in the country. Edmund G. Brown
- Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes. Alfred Lord Tennyson
- The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life… the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. Richard Baker
- Country music is three chords and the truth. Harlan Howard
- An artist, in giving a concert, should not demand an entrance fee but should ask the public to pay, just before leaving as much as they like. From the sum he would be able to judge what the world thinks of him – and we would have fewer mediocre concerts. Kit Coleman, Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts
- A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens… if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly… to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it? Charles Ives
- Music is love in search of a word. Sidney Lanier
- It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. Victor de LaPrade
- Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
- We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
- Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.