James Richardson
American poet.
The first quest or the first love is also the last. The second isn’t.
I don’t know what’s meant by Know thyself, which seems to ask a window to look at a window.
Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.
Often you only have to ask What would I do if I were not afraid?
They say productivity is the key to confidence, and confidence … to productivity. And they’re happy walking back and forth between these two rooms, each the excuse for the other.
Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. … Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt.
He Thought Positively till he became a euphemism for himself.
What’s thinking? You live in a grandly appointed house, but spend all your time rummaging around in the attic for any little trinket you hadn’t known was there.
Happiness, like water, is always available, but so often it seems we’d prefer a different drink.
Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?
Patience is decisive indecision.
Let me have my dreams but not what I dream of.
The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.
Your choices: spend, and believe in things; save, and believe in money.
Anger has been ready to be angry.
Yet sadly we feel that many of the noisiest are more interested in their indignation than in the injustice.
The god of many cannot remain the true god.
I lied. And my embarrassment was so great that I changed everything else to make the lie true.
Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.
Bitterness is a greater failure than failure.