655 Value Quotes

I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.

If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.

A world where nothing is had for nothing.

If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that.

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.

Hold on to me: Someday I may be quite valuable.

Why is my autograph so little in demand, except on checks?

My time is far too valuable for me to spend any of it trying to improve myself.

Unfortunately, it's possible to be able to do something extremely well that nobody ever wants done.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

Obsolescence and death, the reign of the archaic, the abandoned, and the corny: Really, if you saw Windows 3.0 on the sidewalk outside the building, would you bend over and pick it up?!?

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile.

Beauty like hers is genius.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

A friend is worth all hazards we can run.

Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth.

An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

We work to become, not to acquire.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.

I took one Draught of Life - I'll tell you what I paid - Precisely an existence - The market price, they said.

Bread that must be sliced with an ax is bread that is too nourishing.

Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love.

Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it.

You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

The idea of being constructive, creative, positive, in trying to bring out the best in one's own self and the best in others follows from what I've just been saying. Again, I repeat my belief in us, in ourselves, as the product of the process of evolution, and part of the process itself. I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. It's the need to dedicate one's self in that way, to one's own self, and to choose an activity or life that is of value not only to yourself but to others as well.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something.

It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.

The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.

Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that. For a' that an a' that.

To a pet nothing can be useless.

Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.

The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic-the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.

What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?

1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.

There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.

If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

...the analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero...

love is the every only god

The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee - A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy -

Let me explain a little: Certain things are bad so far as they go, such as pain, and no one, not even a lunatic, calls a tooth-ache good in itself; but a knife which cuts clumsily and with difficulty is called a bad knife, which it certainly is not. It is only not so good as other knives to which men have grown accustomed. A knife is never bad except on such rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientifically planted in the middle of one's back. The coarsest and bluntest knife which ever broke a pencil into pieces instead of sharpening it is a good thing in so far as it is a knife. It would have appeared a miracle in the Stone Age. What we call a bad knife is a good knife not good enough for us; what we call a bad hat is a good hat not good enough for us; what we call bad cookery is good cookery not good enough for us; what we call a bad civilization is a good civilization not good enough for us. We choose to call the great mass of the history of mankind bad, not because it is bad, but because we are better. This is palpably an unfair principle. Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

Exuberance is better than taste:

...while a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well.

Money can't buy life.

Oh I see said the Earl but my own idear is that these things are as piffle before the wind.

THE ROCK: 'Before you come in here and start putting little stickers on the Rock's shirt and putting little streamers all over the Rock, the Rock just wants to know-- what is your name?' CLOWN: 'I'm--' ROCK: 'It doesn't MATTER what your name is!' MANKIND: 'Hey, hold it right there! It certainly does matter what her name is, and I'll tell you why! I tried real hard and I went to a lot of expense and time and effort to make this night real special for you! And one by one, you're going to insult my guests and make this night a bad night for me? Sometimes I think you're a very ungrateful little man, Rock!'

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

Time, which is the author of authors.

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things - old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

A good name is like a precious ointment; it filleth all around about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.

Riches are for spending.

Clear out 800,000 people and preserve it as a museum piece.

'One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.' (p. 282)

The more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes.

Now if a man tried To take his time on Earth And prove before he died What one man's life could be worth, Well I wonder what would happen to this world.

I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!' 'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.' What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no - my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!

'What are your fees?' inquired Guyal cautiously. 'I respond to three questions,' stated the augur. 'For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.' - From 'Guyal of Sfere', The Dying Earth.

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking: 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking.

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone. They paved paradise, And put up a parking lot.

Why are so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissue? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to somebody else.

I bought a seven dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.

I saw some two-dollar bills, today. They were for sale for eight dollars. Something went severely wrong there. What happened? It spun out of control. Now it's worth eight, still says 'two'.

'The little folk dare anything', said his friend. 'And they talk a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too.'

He (Pliny the Elder) used to say that 'no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it.'

A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.

A skilful leech is better far Than half an hundred men of war, So he appear'd; and by his skill, No less than dint of sword, cou'd kill.

Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay home and see bad television for nothing.

A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.

To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace. [p.274]

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of Time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this World. Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will certainly most strictly reckon with us, when Time shall be no more.

Suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. It is funny about money. And it is funny about identity. You are you because your little dog knows you, but when your public knows you and does not want to pay for you and when your public knows you and does want to pay for you, you are not the same you. ~Ch. 2

A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints In Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something. ~ Ch.3

You ain't worth a greased lack pin to ram you into hell. Ch.6, p.101

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held - so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place - who knows?

The Rock supposedly doesn't care about the history of the WCW? The Rock doesn't care about the WCW Title? Well The Rock knows damn well the history of the WCW Title. The Rock knows that the title traces back to Frank Gotch, Lou Thesz, Ricky Steamboat, and woooooooooo Ric Flair! The Rock also knows damn well, what in recent years the WCW Title has come to... Diamond Dallas Page? Booker T? The guy from Scream 2, the dog from Married with Children, the maid from the Jeffersons! Shane McMahon, this WCW title is just like your sister, everybody gets a turn!