Quotes About Value

The value of a human being, Nietzsche said, does not lie in his usefulness: for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.

They told us to take anything we wanted, be we were so delighted to be free, nothing else seemed to be of any value.

If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?

Why did Baudelaire — why does anyone — write poetry, in the teeth of all the evidence that one wants you to do so? No one wants you to write it and having written it in spite of them, no one wants to read it. Above all, no one wants to pay for it. For better or worse, a poem has a hard time turning into a commodity.

Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money - it's always been like that.

Das Leben ist zu kostbar um es dem Zufall zu überlassen. - Deus X. Machina

In gewisser Weise sind auch wir Bücherjäger", sagte Gofid. "Obwohl wir uns natürlich nicht der barbarischen Methoden dieser professionellen Mörder bedienen. Wir suchen aus Liebe, nicht aus Gier. Wir suchen mit Herz und Verstand, nicht mit Axt und Schwert. Wir suchen, um zu lernen, und nicht, um uns zu bereichern. Und wir suchen besser! Wir finden die wertvolleren Bücher.

Life is too precious to be left to chance

In my profession it isn't a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it's always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won't be discovered for another hundred years? I'll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.

Cuánto tiempo hemos perdido buscando ser competentes en cosas inútiles y sin sentido, solo por sobrepasar el promedio! Los apegos siempre están al servicio de lo inútil, lo absurdo o lo peligroso, así que no pierdas el tiempo.

La primera lección del amor es la dignidad

un síndrome, no un valor. Pasión por vivir, hacerle el amor a la vida. Hasta el más grande de los placeres puede

Aquellos que se obsesionan con el éxito y lo convierten en un valor, y además manejan esquemas rígidos de ejecución, viajan mal aunque quieran aparentar lo contrario. Quizá la felicidad no esté en ser el mejor vendedor, la mejor mamá, el mejor hijo o descollar en cualquier cosa, sino simplemente en intentarlo de manera honesta y tranquila, y disfrutarlo mientras se lleva a cabo.

No olvidemos que ser deseable no implica ser querible. En suma: deseo no es amor.

La premisa es como sigue: cuanto más hagas del "ganar" un valor, paradójicamente, más destinado estarás a perder.

no te merece quien no te ame

El dogmático cree que vale por lo que tiene, por su patrimonio moral, religioso, político, científico o ideológico, y que esa posesión lo asciende por encima de los demás mortales.

Ah what avails the sceptred race,Ah what the form divine!

It's no fish ye're buying, it's men's lives.

So when we look at any sacrificial action, any surrender of wealth we must first acknowledge that it is in fact wealth.

Do I situate myself in an environment that fosters recollection, that fosters calm, that allows me to see the value of things? Piles do not allow me to see the value of things. So what kind of space do I live in?

During the one hundred years after the beginning of the gold rush, the output of California's gold totaled about $2 billion. All the gold produced in a century was worth less than the total value of one year's agricultural output of the state in the 1960s.

The value of the California crude oil produced in the decade of the 1920s was more than two and a half billion dollars. . . . the value of all the gold ever mined in the state — about two billion dollars.

Don't imagine having things that you don't have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn't have them. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27