I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
Bette DavisRead
If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being liked by everyone often indicates a lack of distinctiveness or excitement in one's personality.
Bette Davis suggests that if you strive for universal approval, you might compromise your individuality and authenticity. True uniqueness and depth can sometimes lead to mixed opinions, but itβs preferable to be interesting and true to oneself than to be bland and agreeable to all.
Themes
IndividualityAuthenticityApprovalUniquenessPersonality
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about being true to oneself.
More from Bette Davis
All quotes βI have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Bette DavisRead
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
Bette DavisRead
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Bette DavisRead
Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.
Bette DavisRead
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.
Bette DavisRead
Similar quotes
Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.
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These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.
John BanvilleRead
When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually "become" a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.
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Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them.
B. R. AmbedkarRead
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
Alfred KorzybskiRead
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Thomas MertonRead