John Quotes

Success is a rare paint, hides all the ugliness.

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.

The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.

After years of amassing information about Unconventional Flying Objects (UFOs) I have come to the conclusion that we are dealing with a very complex mystery on an international scale.

Do we have Steve Jobs to thank for the iPod and iPod shuffle? iTunes? I think so. He changed the way we hear and think about music.

I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore.

You must be a fundamentalist to be really successful in the market.

True peace is a quality you carry within yourself, regardless of external circumstances.

The question is not is there a God, but is there anything else except God?

The only way to experience love is to give it.

I thought, I'm only going to be on this planet once, and only for a short time. What can I do with my life that will lead to permanent benefits?

I'd like to do a television show that is encouraging, useful, and clean, and I'd like to go up against Entertainment Tonight and beat it.

I come from the performance world, but the idea of a worship song is different. It's useful music.

Those worship songs on the Christmas project will air on PBS television. That's highly unusual.

I'm not an instinctive actor.

No murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

Fill each day with light and heart.

There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.

The little and short sayings of nice And excellent men are of great value, like the dust of gold, or the least sparks of diamonds.

Next to the wicked lives of men, nothing is so great a disparagement and weakening to religion as the divisions of Christians.

If God were not a necessary Being of Himself, He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men.

And as for Pleasure, there is little in this World that is true and sincere, besides the Pleasure of doing our Duty, and of doing good.

Men sunk in the greatest darkness imaginable retain some sense and awe of the Deity.

Are we proud and passionate, malicious and revengeful? Is this to be like-minded with Christ, who was meek and lowly?

We anticipate our own happiness, and eat out the heart and sweetness of worldly pleasures by delightful forethought of them.

Great is the advantage of patience.

If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them.

With the history of Moses no book in the world, in point of antiquity, can contend.

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I keep some portion of my early gleam; Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, It lights my life, a far illusive dream, Moves as I move, and leads me on forever.

The birds can fly, an' why can't I? Must we give in, says he with a grin, That the bluebird an' phoebe are smarter 'n we be?

You know, I've never killed a man before. I mean I droped bombs on the enemy from the above, but never face to face. [thinking pause] I don't see what the big deal is - I really don't.

I am not at all computer literate in real life. I haven't yet found a reason to be. Once I find a reason why I need to be on the Internet, then I will be.

I enjoy, and always have enjoyed, disturbing scientists.

The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.

I think books should have secrets, like people do.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

As souls must cry when they awaken in tiny babies and find themselves far from heaven

New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.

Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

Human was the music, natural was the static.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.