James Richardson Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.”
-- James Richardson

#Reading #Writing #Mean

“Nothing important comes with instructions.”
-- James Richardson

#Important #Instruction

“What is more yours than what always holds you back?”
-- James Richardson

“When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.”
-- James Richardson

#Writing #Trying #Hearing

“How sure we are that everyone's watching. How sure we are that no one sees.”
-- James Richardson

#Perception

“The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.”
-- James Richardson

#Philosophical #Suffering #May

“I would never accuse Willie Brown of slowing down, because he never does.”
-- James Richardson

#Doe #Slow Down #Brown

“The road reaches every place, the short cut only one.”
-- James Richardson

#Cutting

“Easier to keep changing your life than to live it.”
-- James Richardson

#Changing Your Life #Easier

“Reason is the lesser faith that steers us when we have already lost a greater one.”
-- James Richardson

#Reason #Lost

“God help my neighbors if I loved them as I love myself.”
-- James Richardson

#I Love Myself #Helping #Neighbor

“On what is valuable thieves and the law agree.”
-- James Richardson

#Law #Thieves #Valuable

“Those who are too slow to be intelligent deserve our patience, those who are too quick, our pity.”
-- James Richardson

#Intelligent #Pity #Deserve

“Think of all the smart people made stupid by flaws of character. The finest watch isn't fine long when used as a hammer.”
-- James Richardson

#Smart #Stupid #Character

“How often feelings are circular. How embarrassing to be embarrassed. How annoying to be annoyed.”
-- James Richardson

#Annoyed #Feelings #Annoying

“I'm a kid checking mail, a kid on his cell with his questions: are we in love, Life, are we exclusive, are we forever?”
-- James Richardson

#Love Life #Kids #Cells

“Metaphor isn't just a fancy turn of speech. It shapes our thoughts and feelings, reaches out to grasp new experience, and even binds our five disparate senses. James Geary's fascinating and utterly readable I is an Other brings the news on metaphor from literature and economics, from neuroscience and politics, illuminating topics from consumer behavior to autism spectrum disorders to the evolution of language. As a writer, as a teacher, and as someone just plain fascinated by how our minds work, I've been waiting years for exactly this book.”
-- James Richardson

#Teacher #Book #Years

“You have two kinds of secrets. The ones only you know. The ones only you don't.”
-- James Richardson

#Two #Secret #Kind

“Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?”
-- James Richardson

#Break #Thread

“All work is the avoidance of harder work.”
-- James Richardson

#Harder #Avoidance

“There are silences harder to take back than words.”
-- James Richardson

#Silence #Harder

“It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.”
-- James Richardson

#Empty

“It is by now proverbial that every proverb has its opposite. For every Time is money there is a Stop and smell the roses. When someone says You never stand in the same river twice someone else has already replied There is nothing new under the sun. In the mind's arithmetic, 1 plus -1 equals 2. Truths are not quantities but scripts: Become for a moment the mind in which this is true.”
-- James Richardson

#Opposites #Rivers #Smell

“If it can be used again, it is not wisdom but theory.”
-- James Richardson

#Used #Theory

“Sophistication is upscale conformity.”
-- James Richardson

#Conformity #Sophistication

“Bitterness is a greater failure than failure.”
-- James Richardson

#Bitterness

“Anger has been ready to be angry.”
-- James Richardson

#Ready #Angry

“Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.”
-- James Richardson

#Vices #Attention #Morality

“If you do more than your share you'd better want to: otherwise, you're paying yourself in a currency recognized nowhere else.”
-- James Richardson

#Want #Currency #Share

“I don't know what's meant by Know thyself, which seems to ask a window to look at a window.”
-- James Richardson

#Looks #Window #Know Thyself