Chicago Theater Blog

Motivational Quotes

Too many people think only of their own profit. But business opportunity seldom knocks on the door of self-centered people. No customer ever goes to a store merely to please the storekeeper.
            — Kazuo Inamori 

The most decisive actions of our life – I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future – are, more often than not, unconsidered.
        — Andre Gide 

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
        — Abraham Lincoln , speech in Washington D.C., 1865

A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.
            — Patricia Neal 

I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience.
            — Shakti Gawain 

You must not come lightly to the blank page.
            — Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
            — Leonardo da Vinci 

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
            — Georgia O’Keeffe

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
            — Carrie Fisher 

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
            — Anna Quindlen 

Love isn’t a decision. It’s a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical.
            — Trey Parker and Matt Stone , South Park, Chef Aid, 1998

We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.
            — Ethel Barrett 

If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.
            — George Burns

Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.
            — Willa Cather, My Antonia

Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
            — Anonymous

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
            — Colin Powell

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
            — Charles Dickens

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone’s attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.
            — Salma Hayek

Holding onto anger is like grasping onto a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned.
            — Gautama Buddha

Urban Dictionary

Professional Student

Person who receives multiple degrees and keeps taking courses instead of holding a profession related to the degrees earned. Can be a compliment or an insult depending on the speaker.

Ex. 1: a compliment
“Man, I think you’re so cool for writing a dissertation on Mesoamerican maize fertilization. You’re a real professional student!”
Ex.2 an insult:
“Hey Jack, won’t you get a real job and quit being a professional student?”

Jack-Off all trades

A person who does not use profession as criteria for choosing sexual partners

- How’d you swing that? I thought Jane only fucked above a certain income bracket.
Naa man, she’s a jack off all trades

Phantasmagoria (noun)
[fan-taz'-mah-GORE-ee-ah]

1. a dreamlike state where real and imagined elements are blurred together: “She has finally emerged from the drug-induced phantasmagoria of the last decade.”
2. a series of events involving rapid changes in light intensity and color
3. fantastic imagery, especially as represented in art
adjective form: phantasmagoric
adverb form: phantasmagorically

In action:
“…life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility.”
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-1911). U.S. novelist and short story writer. Chapters from a Life (1897).