Category: Great Quotes

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners
I wish someone told me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.
But there is a gap.
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.
We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.
We all go through this.
And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is
DO A LOT OF WORK
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap
and your work will be as good as your ambitions
And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.
It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while.
You’ve just gotta fight your way through it.
– Ira Glass

More of this, please.

The paradox of our age
We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgement;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street
to meet the new neighbor.
We built more computers to hold more information
to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It’s a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.
…His holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Superchrome

December 9th, 2009 Permalink

Check out the latest addition to my web portfolio, Superchrome.
Superchro.me Image

I haven’t told you this before, but I’m a sucker for good quotes. I love em, and can’t get enough. I happened across one of my most cherished belongings years ago as a twenty year old – an old leather bound book published in 1910 called Old Friends Are Best, which contains hundreds of some of the finest quotes I have ever encountered. These come from some of the greatest poets and writers we’ve known, such as Longfellow, Emerson, Dickens, and Twain, with plenty of wonderful additions from less known intellects as well.

I’ll share a few quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson tonight, but before I do, I want to tell you that if you ever want to make my year decade, or if you’d like to extract from me ten times your actual costs, then present this book to me in good condition and the leather bound edition. You won’t bring me more humility or gratitude with any other earthly gift, I think.

And on to the words:

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

And probably my favorite of the evening is the following:

“Every brave heart must treat society as a child, and never allow it to dictate.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson