James Richardson Quotes

I am not unambitious. I am just too ambitious for what you call ambitions.

What did you do today? Nothing say our little children, and so do I. What we most are is what we keep mistaking for nothing.

A belief is a question we have put aside so we can get on with what we believe we have to do.

So many times I’ve made myself stupid with the fear of being outsmarted.

Seizing on a piece of business, I become tiny, eager, efficient: roiled water I cannot see into.

Impatience is not wanting to understand that you don’t understand.

Envy is ashamed of itself. If it weren’t hanging back, it would go all the way to emulation and love.

Happiness is the readiness to be happy.

Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. … Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt.

The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time.

There is no road to the land without roads.

If you do everything for one reason, then all you have done will become meaningless when the reason does.

The first quest or the first love is also the last. The second isn’t.

I lied. And my embarrassment was so great that I changed everything else to make the lie true.

I’m sitting here bored, … trying to remember that everything is a complete mystery.