top of page
"One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Wisdom quotes

"There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there."

"Deep down I believe each of us is a well-spring of understanding and wisdom, but we simply never allow the space or time for this understanding to rise to the level of conscious thought."

"There is an undeniable truth that as one progresses further in his understanding of a craft the rest of his life progresses along with it. This symbiotic relationship between all things is experienced on a daily basis, but rarely articulated through conscious thought."

"Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."

"One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better."

"Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?"

"Out of clutter, find simplicity."
Explore more quotes by Zadie Smith

"Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable."

"He had liked to listen to the exotic (to a Belsey) chatter of business and money and practical politics; to hear that Equality was a myth, and Multiculturalism was a fatuous dream; he thrilled at the suggestion that Art was a gift from God, blessing only a handful of masters, and most Literature merely a veil for poorly reasoned left-wing ideologies."

"Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house."

"They were smooth and bright, and their timing was wonderful, and they were young and hilarious. It was really something to see, they thought, and this was why they spoke loudly and gestured, inviting onlookers to admire."

"These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained."

"It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe."

"There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route."

"Four months in the life of a seventeen-year-old is the stuff of swings and roundabouts, ... Never again in your life do you possess the capacity for such total personality overhaul."

"I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame."
bottom of page