Freely Translated Quotes & Sayings

One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience. — William Safire

I'm trying to finish my book on the Kennedy assassination. — Vincent Bugliosi

I don't know how to blow stuff up. You were hurting, and I wanted to help, but I didn't know how, so I blew something up. — Alyssa Day

Accustom yourself to tireless activity. — Alexander Suvorov

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine. — Michel De Montaigne

Writing is difficult. It's a time commitment, it's labor and I'd have to get myself to sit down and actually do the work and outline. — Busy Philipps

It's Crazy when I watch myself on TV. I'm always thinking like 'oh no how could I have done that' and I go crazy like seeing these little things that I do that probably other people would never even notice and stuff like that. — Miranda Cosgrove

Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role. — Bernard-Henri Levy

Perhaps it's time, I muse, to close those chapters and remember the enduring lesson of my entrapment: that relationships, not accomplishments, are what's important in life. — Aron Ralston

He who thinks that he is being released from the work, and not set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes the Christ from whom the freedom comes, mistakes the condition into which his soul is invited. — Phillips Brooks

We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them and achieve something better. Nobody, however, likes to think about anything unpleasant, even to avoid it. And so the crucial problem of thermonuclear war is frequently dispatched with the label 'War is unthinkable'
which, translated freely, means we don't want to think about it. — Albert Wohlstetter

At Camp Don Bosco, there were Bibles all over the place, mostly 1970s hippie versions like Good News for Modern Man. They had groovy titles like The Word or The Way, and translated the Bible into "contemporary English," which meant Saul yelling at Jonathan, "You son of a bitch!" (I Samuel 20:30). Awesome! The King James version gave this verse as "Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman," which was bogus in comparison. Maybe these translations went a bit far. I recall one of the Bibles translating the inscription over the cross, "INRI" (Iesus Nazaremus Rex Iudaeorum), as "SSDD" (Same Shit Different Day), and another describing the Last Supper - the night before Jesus' death, a death he freely accepted - where Jesus breaks the bread, gives it to his disciples, and says, "It's better to burn out than fade away," but these memories could be deceptive. — Rob Sheffield

I didn't know I had this many fans in Puerto Rico. I'm going to carry this memory to my grave. — Allen Iverson