Anne Carson Quotes

I do tend to overdo everything.

The body, enervated by the excesses of the preceding day, weighs down and prostates the mind also.

Thought, stumbling, plods Past fallen temples, vanished gods, Altars unincensed, fanes undecked, Eternal systems flown or wrecked; Through trackless centuries that grant To the poor trudge refreshment scant, Age after age, pants on to find A melting mirage of the mind.

If you do too much it's going to lose its effectiveness.

Never mind the use--do it!

No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself,--the most unwholesome of food.

Living had little use for me other than how it could be funneled into dance.

Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.

The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.

To touch God a little with our mind is a great blessing, to grasp him is impossible.

... the life of the mind is reality, and love without romantic illumination is a spiritless matter.

You want to know the biggest illusion about success? That it's like a pinnacle to be climbed, a thing to be possessed, or a static result to be achieved. If you want to succeed, if you want to achieve all your outcomes, you have to think of success as a process, a way of life, a habit of mind, a strategy for life.

Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

I do not play games. There is not time for it. When I get through with work, I don't want anything that requires the working of the mind.

It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.

As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.

I always tried to work hard and stay focused, and just use one opportunity to contribute to the next.

The evening papers print what they do and get away with it because by afternoon the human mind is ruined anyhow.

Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.

So much depends upon our willingness to make up our minds, collectively and individually, that present levels of performance are not acceptable, either to ourselves or to the Lord. In saying that, I am not calling for flashy, temporary differences in our performance levels, but a quiet resolve to do a better job, to lengthen our stride.

We believed anything worth doing was worth over-doing