James Salter Quotes

The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.

James Salter

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

  

  Karen Thompson Walker
  • Live
  • Future
  • Control

• I had a very brilliant father who was not only intellectual, but was street-smart and very curious to boot. The day I found out that he didn't know everything, I grew up. It was a shock. I just thought that the man was the end-all of everything, and he knew the answer to everything. Then I found out I'd have to find out my own answers.

  

  Iris Apfel
  • Up
  • Father
  • Man

• It's nice to work with your own alma mater.

  

  A. James Clark
  • Work
  • Nice
  • Own

• Beelzebub is the isolated part of the human being. This part or this real human being has been obscured by religious structures.

  

  Youssef Ziedan
  • Real
  • Religious
  • Human

• Blessed with Mom and Dad's remarkable genes, raised on big words and big, iconoclastic attitudes, Larry and I, before entering kindergarten, knew who we were, what we wanted, and how we would get there.

  

  Dan Hill
  • Words
  • Dad
  • Mom

• I had a crazy life for a teenager. I lived in New Jersey, but I'd go to Vermont for three weeks, join a commune, take pictures with the guy I was dating, come back home, and post photos.

  

  Halsey
  • Life
  • Home
  • Guy

• Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • Life
  • Reality
  • Changes

• The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

  

  Ovid
  • Often
  • Roses
  • Sharp

• Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • You
  • Writer
  • Someone

• It's kind of a funny way to put it, but if you want to study a dynamic economic system, what you'd like to be able to do is focus on the linkages, say, between asset markets and the macro economy without having to model everything at the same time.

  

  Lars Peter Hansen
  • Time
  • Funny
  • Focus

• People call me a hermit. But I'm happy.

  

  Sage Stallone
  • People
  • Happy
  • Me

• I love to conduct opera.

  

  Zubin Mehta
  • Love
  • I Love
  • Opera

• If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.

  

  Bayard Rustin
  • Society
  • Peace
  • Desire

• I will go to what they call a court. Only they call it a court.

  

  Jack Kevorkian
  • Will
  • Court
  • Call

• Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

  

  Frances Wright
  • Like
  • Period
  • Christmas

• Right whales - so named because they were 'the right whale to kill' - grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths.

  

  Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Ocean
  • Through
  • Whales

• Since I started in Nascar, popularity has definitely gone up. I've become more attractive and helpful to companies that are looking for spokespersons. So from that perspective, things are going really well.

  

  Danica Patrick
  • Up
  • Perspective
  • More

• One year's poor form remains a blip but if it happens next year, you can say it's a trend.

  

  Gary Neville
  • You
  • Year
  • Poor

• Really, what's not to love in John McCain, satire-wise? As if he had not already been good enough to us, then came his nomination of Sarah Palin. Here, truly, was a gift from the gods of satire.

  

  Christopher Buckley
  • Good
  • Wise

• If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward.... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward.

  

  J. I. Packer
  • People
  • Thinking
  • May

• I am a Lutheran astrologer, I throw away the nonsense and keep the hard kernel.

  

  Johannes Kepler
  • Away
  • Throw
  • Astrologer

• When the future is foggy, it turns out you don't need a calendar -- just a to-do list.

  

  Brian Christian
  • Future
  • Calendar

• Da quel puntodepende il cielo e tutta la natura.

  

  Dante Alighieri

• The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.

  

  James Salter