black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Brenda Ueland

Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o’clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve.
BRENDA UELAND

Credit Doctor More Morning Office Realize
There is that American pastime known as “kidding” – with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.
BRENDA UELAND

Enthusiasm Feelings Passion
And least of all – which is so important, too – to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force…When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
BRENDA UELAND

Imporatnt Least Listened Strange
It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.
BRENDA UELAND

Art Go Letting Mistake
The only way to love a person is…by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish.
BRENDA UELAND

Alive Believe Listening
Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.
BRENDA UELAND

Effort Lilies People
the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.
BRENDA UELAND

Better Person Way Writing
I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months.
BRENDA UELAND

Fun People Writing
I know that we live after death and again and again, not in the memory of our children, or as a mulch for trees and flowers, however poetic that may be, but looking passionately and egocentrically out of our eyes.
BRENDA UELAND

Children Flower Memories
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND

Best Way Trying Way
Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk.
BRENDA UELAND

Coffee Strong Writing
And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
BRENDA UELAND

Children Enemies Friends Husband
And it is why all the bright women of the world, who if more were expected of them, might do important work, but who instead have a chronic feeling of ineffectiveness and sloth.
BRENDA UELAND

Ineffectiveness Instead might Sloth Women
Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.
BRENDA UELAND

Knows Thinking Work
Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.
BRENDA UELAND

Energy Inspiration Time
You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening Thinking

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Brenda Ueland Quotes