Ask HN: Favorite inspiring quotes or verses? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Favorite inspiring quotes or verses?

13 pointsryanwaggoner26 comments

OK, this is just for entertainment. I enjoy collecting great quotes and pieces of verse that inspire me in my entrepreneurial ventures, and indeed in pursuit of a life well-lived. I've seen a few of my favorites posted here, so I know I'm not the only one. What are some written words that have inspired you?

View on HN

    The sons of Hermes love to play
    And only do their best when they
      Are told they oughtn't.
    Apollo's children never shrink
    From boring jobs but have to think
      Their work important.

The rest is good too.

I like how one needs a British accent to get lines 3 and 6 to rhyme.

Not all inspirational in my entrepreneurial ventures, but here is a selection from my TftD file that I'm compiling. Some are designed to make me smile when I think about some of my customers, others are to make me focus on more important things in life.

  "Never argue with idiots.  They drag you down
      to their level and beat you with experience."
      -- Dilbert


   Always do right. This will gratify some and
      astonish others.  -- Mark Twain


   Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.


   Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good
      for anything, but you still can't help but smile
      when you see one tumble down the stairs.


   The hardest job kids face today is learning
      good manners without ever seeing any.
      -- Fred Astaire.


   The whole theory of modern education is radically
      unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate,
      education produces no effect whatsoever.
      -- Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest.


   The young today are casual, bad mannered and have
      no respect for the old. -- Socrates


   Why do we bother bringing this canary down the
      mine?   All the damn thing does is sleep ...


   What we have done for ourselves alone dies with
      us.  What we have done for others and the world
      remains and is immortal. -- Albert Pike

Finally:

   "Bother," said the Borg as they assimilated Pooh.

   * Just keep walking! *

my latest inspiring quote. (I wish I could make it bold)

this quote is not from a book, not a website, not from a blog, but from a post right here on HN. (and quoted by the OP in another post): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625644

I find quotes with a background/anecdote attached to it more inspiring. They inspire me on a whole different level...much much better than ones in "look before you leap" and the likes in the idiom based quotes league.

Er...it's actually a quote from Johnnie Walker. You know, the booze? Their official tagline is "Keep walking" - but they use "Just keep walking" in many of their advertisements.

EX: "There's no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs. Just keep walking. - Johnnie Walker."

I first saw the quote "Just Keep Walking" in THIS specific context several years ago when Johnnie Walker published an in-magazine booklet targeted to entrepreneurs. I think it was in Fast Company or Business 2.0. Maybe both of them. I sent off and received a free t-shirt from them with that quote and their logo of a silhouetted man walking. The striding man. The booklet talked about persistence and determination, etc. It was called something like "Just keep walking: A handbook for entrepreneurs."

[P.S. - Sorry to ruin your story/anecdote.]

" Sorry to ruin your story/anecdote" ..not at all. I am aware of the johnnie walker whiskey ad. But story that "pj" wrote about his experience in the library meant more than the ad tagline 'keep walking' - in my opinion. I didn't mention about the tagline coincidence - to avoid diluting the meaning.

It's akin to the "just do it", which we always see all around, but i see it as an ad, not a motivation.

I actually just quoted that to someone else yesterday :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727416

My current favorite from poetry:

  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
  Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
  We are not now that strength which in old days
  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
  One equal temper of heroic hearts,
  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  from "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

My favorite quote:

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."

-T.E. Lawrence

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

-- Mark Twain

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

-- George Patton

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat

That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: fardest from him is best

Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream

Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields

Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less then he

Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

-- Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost

" We cannont solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" --Albert Einstein

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery" --James Joyce

"Where will you be when you get where you are going?" --unknown

"We are not so much anti-capitalist (...) We're fortunate enough to have built a very healthy business, even though we haven't attempted to. All we have done is stop short of trying to become insanely wealthy. We have met billionaires and it sounds funny but it's not necessarily a bed of roses to have that kind of money. (...) Their life becomes about figuring out how to employ all that money either by philanthropy or other means. So we don't consider it that revolutionary to have stopped short of that." --Jim Buckmaster, CEO Craigslist

"Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."

Quoted from Randy Komisar's "The Monk and the Riddle"

Fleeing cold whiteness, I would sit alone--
Not in the sun--I feared his bronzing light,
But in his radiance back around me thrown
By fulgent mirrors tempering his might;
Thus bathing in a moon-bath not too bright,

My skin I tinted slow to ivory tone.

"...there are other kinds of globalization, the globalization of cooperation and sharing knowledge" -rms (the real one)

----------

"Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." -Hunter S. Thompson

----------

Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?

Teen1: I don't even know anymore. - [3F21] Homerpalooza

----------

"And AC said, 'LET THERE BE LIGHT!'

And there was light --" -Asimov

"The Last Question" is perhaps the best short story I have ever read. Thanks for the reminder to read it again.

"Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you...Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question..Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use".

From "The Teachings of Don Juan"

“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”

- Hugh Macleod

Whether we fall from ambition, blood or lust Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

-- John Webster

"If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -- Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication -– Leonardo Da Vinci

“Be so good they can’t ignore you." - Steve Martin

"I don't look to jump over 7 foot bars, I look around for 1 foot bars that I can step over."

Attributed to Warren Buffet.

Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun. -- W.B. Yeats, poem introducing _Responsibilities_

Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

Steve Jobs (allegedly): "Real artists ship."

"Truth is a pathless land" - JK

Reply on news.ycombinator.com