Daniel Handler Quotes

I played with a few local bands in the West Country, where I grew up, but when I was 18, I moved to London, which at that time was probably the most exciting musical city in the world. I was supposed to be studying dentistry, but all the time I was looking for a band to join.

I've never had a musical career. So I think it's been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it's sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit.

I don't think you should just do what makes you happy. Do what makes you great. Do what's uncomfortable and scary and hard but pays off in the long run... Let yourself fail... And pick yourself up and fail again. Without that struggle, what is your success anyway?

[The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection ... If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [ Dichter ], but never a perfected, a truly great man.

I've always played music and I've always been in bands and there have been periods in my life where the music has taken a much more front row seat than any acting. For a big period of time the acting work was really a way of raising money to fund my music. And then that all sort of changed around and that's fine.

There's only one why. You only have one why, and your why is fully formed by the time you're 17, 18 or 19years old, maybe even earlier. The rest of your life are simply opportunities to either live in or out of balance and the career choices we make and the decisions we make in our lives either put us in balance with our why, which makes us happy, fulfilled and inspired. Or it puts us out of our why, which makes us frustrated, stressed out and sometimes we fail.

Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.

James Burton was playing some pure roots stuff. Gram Parsons took an interest in that record [in '68-'69] and he admired it. I never had the concept that I'm going to go somewhere and I'm going to have this career. I just really never thought about all that.

Hast thou attempted greatnesse? Then go on; Back-turning slackens resolution.

A lot of the things I've enjoyed the most and that I think have been the best are ensembles.

Even the good Homer is sometimes caught napping.

I'm thankful that I proved myself in music which is my first love, my first passion before I got involved in this media. I am hoping to bring it back to the music now.

don't sabotage your own greatness by succumbing to failure!

But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery.

Every one must be familiar with the often expressed opinion, that, as a practical politician, Mr. Mill's career was essentially a failure.

You like to live life without regret but that’s what the good Lord intended for me – that’s just the way it was. My goal was to make it in the NFL, I played with a lot of great players in college who went on to have illustrious, incredible careers and in the end it just didn’t happen for me. I failed at that.

In ways to greatness think on this, That slippery all ambition is

You are grown so very great now, yet the higher a man climbs the farther he has to fall.

My priorities have always been God first, family second, career third. I have found that when I put my life in this order, everything seems to work out. God was my first priority early in my career when I was struggling to make ends meet. Through the failures and success I have experienced since then, my faith has remained unchecked.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

I hope at some point in my career when my name is mentioned, someone will say "Oh yeah he has a good song!" I'd be happy with that.

I studied music all the way through college, but as soon as I graduated from university, I got straight into London and got straight into film music. So really my experiences have been being around the orchestras in London and being around the people who work in film music.

But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of scorn for money except as it allowed them to live the way they wanted to live.

Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail.

I've done four movies. I've done seven albums. So I feel like music has always been a part of my life; acting is something I'm learning.