Personal Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

It was Mr. Littlewood (I believe) who remarked that "every positive integer was one of his personal friends."

John Edensor Littlewood

I know that the real Brockovich liked to dress provocatively; that's her personal style and she's welcome to it. But the Hollywood version makes her look like a miniskirted hooker, with bras that peek cheerfully above her necklines.

Personal publicity is apt to be dangerous to any writer's integrity; for the moment he begins to fancy himself as quite a person, a taint creeps into his work.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.

It is fear that drives [the hippies] to seek the warmth, the protection, the safety of a herd. When they speak of merging themselves into a "greater whole," it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies - and what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance.

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest....

James Branch Cabell

There is something impure in the laments about the dangers of our time, as if they could serve to excuse our personal failure.

I'm not attacking anyone. I have no animosity towards Lana, I was just trying to put things in perspective from personal experience

Frances Bean Cobain

I'd learned a long time ago that one of the finest weapons in my arsenal was my ability to invade personal space

Maggie Stiefvater

i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him

An identity based in the one-way love of God does not take into account public opinion or, thankfully, even personal opinion.

Tullian Tchividjian

To what degree does it help us to change our life, or even to sense our existence, to really evaluate why? I think those questions cannot be escaped. Sometimes in history it's more hidden; somewhere these can be very personal and individual questions. But in certain times and certain places, your existence has to be associated with other people's situations. You have to make a reaction to the living conditions. It's not avoidable. You cannot just be blind about what is happening there. Such is the case in China.

Walk in Christ's light daily through fidelity to personal and liturgical prayer, nourished by meditation on the inspired word of God.. Make the daily celebration of the Eucharist the center of your life.

Pope Benedict XVI

But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.

John Stuart Mill

I'm very interested in the 'Culture of Interpretation.' I'm convinced that each great artist has his own personal style, but it is his artistic responsibility in developing this style to respond other interpretations, either prior or at the same time. I'm convinced that Rubinstein would have presented us another Chopin if Cortot had not existed. Cortot presented very romantic Chopin interpretations - really masterly, outstanding, but confused. Rubinstein's immediate answer was a very classical Chopin. He was really the first to point out the classical line and structure in his oeuvre.

Burkard Schliessmann

Ancient Indians had a far deeper confidence in living speech than in the moral, impersonal and derivative written communication. When words issued from the mouth of a sayer, they carried a personal endorsement.

Robert T. Oliver

If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!

[It is] a question of personal appeal and conviction, rather than any argument. The cards I fancy are sympathy, understanding of his hopes, suspicions and disappointments, but above all, striving to convey to him, through what one says, a real echo of the sincerity that pervaded your doings in London.

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me.

Clare Boothe Luce

Here is my personal opinion about prostitution. If men knew how to do it, they wouldn't have to pay for it.

The popular mind has grown so confused that it is no longer able to receive any statement of fact except as an expression of personal feeling.

Dorothy L. Sayers

No man can be explained by his personal history, least of all a poet.

Katherine Anne Porter

The transition from proprietary architecture to open modular architecture just happens over and over again. It happened in the personal computer. Although it didn't kill Apple's computer business, it relegated Apple to the status of a minor player. … You also see modularity organized around the Android operating system that is growing much faster than the iPhone. So I worry that modularity will do its work on Apple.

Clayton M. Christensen

When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York, she was regarded as fair game, and was called a "she doctor." The college that had admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women; and supposed they were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great personal worth and a level head. How good it was that such a woman was the first doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to contend with prejudice and every opposing thing.

Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.