Famous Quotes |
| Peace won by the compromise of principles is a short-lived achievement. |
Author Unknown |
| Peace may cost as much as war, but it is a better buy. |
Author Unknown |
| Money cannot buy peace of mind. It
cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none. |
Richard M. DeVos |
| When we are unable to find tranquillity within ourselves, it is useless
to seek it elsewhere. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Anything too stupid to be said is sung. |
Voltaire |
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) |
| We must always tell what we see.
Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see. |
Charles Peguy |
| The greatest thing a human soul ever
does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who
can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is
poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one. |
John Ruskin |
English critic, essayist, & reformer
(1819 - 1900) |
| This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection. |
Saint Augustine |
Carthaginian author, saint, & church father (354 AD - 430 AD) |
| The perfection preached in the
Gospels never yet built up an empire. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But
all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high
qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends. |
Charles de Gaulle |
French general & politician
(1890 - 1970) |
| Trifles go to make perfection,<br>And perfection is no trifle. |
Michelangelo Buonarroti |
Italian architect, painter, & sculptor (1475 - 1564) |
| Plodding wins the race. |
Aesop |
Greek slave & fable author
(620 BC - 560 BC) |
| Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows
unconsciously into genius. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are
content with failure. |
Chinese |
| If I had to select one quality, one
personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the
trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get
knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, "Here comes
number seventy-one!" |
Richard M. DeVos |
| The man who gives up accomplishes
nothing and is only a hindrance. The man who does not give up can move mountains. |
Ernest Hello |
| How many a man has thrown up his
hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success? |
Elbert Hubbard |
US author (1856 - 1915) |
| The falling drops at last will wear the stone. |
Lucretius |
Roman Epicurean poet, philosopher, & scientist (96 BC - 55 BC) |
| Few things are impracticable in
themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Every great work, every great
accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big
achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement. |
Florence Scovel Shinn |
| The miracle, or the power, that
elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined
spirit. |
Mark Twain |
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| If you get up one time more than you fall, you will make it through. |
Author Unknown |
| The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next. |
Henry Ward Beecher |
US abolitionist & clergyman
(1813 - 1887) |
| True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what
is. |
Victor Cousin |
French philosopher (1792 - 1867) |
| Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| A true philosopher is like an
elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place. |
Fontenelle |
| There is only one thing that a
philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers. |
William James |
US Pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910) |
| Any genuine philosophy leads to
action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery. |
Henry Miller |
US author (1891 - 1980) |
| A great philosophy is not one that
passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion. |
Charles Peguy |
| Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present
evils triumph over it. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| To be a philosopher is not merely to
have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. |
Henry David Thoreau |
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| I believe that there never was a
creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be
admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful
to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers
considerably above him who imagined innate ideas. |
Voltaire |
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) |
| Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick
and shovel. |
Author Unknown |
| Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness? |
Artemus Ward |
US humorist (1834 - 1867) |
| Play is an essential function of the
passage from immaturity to emotional maturity. Any individual without the opportunities for adequate play in early
life will go on seeking them in the stuff of adult life. |
Margaret Lowenfeld |
| The parent who gets down on the
floor to play with a child on Christmas Day is usually doing a most remarkable thing -- something seldom repeated during
the rest of the year. These are, after all, busy parents committed to their
work or their success in the larger society, and they do not have much
left-over time in which to play with their children. |
Brian Sutton-Smith |
| A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| Sinful and forbidden pleasures are
like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end. |
Tyron Edwards |
| None has more frequent conversations
with a disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like
angry creditors, are continually making fruitless demands for what he is
unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his
regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is,
therefore, the most unpleasing life. |
James Goldsmith |
| The pleasures of the world are
deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them
and they make us despair in losing them. |
Madame de Lambert |
| Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones. |
Seneca |
Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD) |
| Would you who judge of the
lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your
conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual
things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body
over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself. |
Robert Southey |
English poet (1774 - 1843) |
| Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is
leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem. |
Kahlil Gibran, Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times:
Obit-Editorial, April 1982 |
Lebanese artist & poet in US
(1883 - 1931) |
| No good poem, however confessional
is may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster? |
Robert Cecil Day Lewis |
| Sometimes I think the surest sign
that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. |
Bill Watterson, cartoonist, "Calvin and Hobbes" |
US cartoonist (1958 - ) |
| To name an object is to deprive a
poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game; the ideal is to suggest. |
Wallace Stevens |
US poet (1879 - 1955) |
| No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in
tilling a field as in writing a poem. |
Booker T. Washington |
US educator (1856 - 1915) |
| A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. |
Robert Frost |
US poet (1874 - 1963) |
| Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without
poetry. |
Charles Baudelaire |
French poet (1821 - 1867) |
| Poetry reveals to us the loveliness
of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the
enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love,
strengthens our interest in human mature, by vivid delineations of its
tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic
visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. |
William E. Channing |
| Poetry is not a turning loose of
emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of
course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want
to escape from these things. |
Emily Dickinson |
US poet (1830 - 1886) |
| I take as metaphysical poetry that
in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what
is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be
feeling. |
T. S. Eliot |
British (US-born) critic, dramatist & poet (1888 - 1965) |
| Sooner of later that which is now
life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there
are three other people. |
Orson Welles |
US actor & director (1915 -
1985) |
| It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. |
Michel de Montaigne |
French essayist (1533 - 1592) |
| Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history. |
Plato |
Greek author & philosopher in Athens
(427 BC - 347 BC) |
| The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly. |
Frederick William Robertson |
| The greatest poem is not that which
is most skillfully constructed, but that in which there is the most poetry. |
L. Schefer |
| Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and
best minds. |
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| Good poetry seems too simple and
natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy
speech. |
Henry David Thoreau |
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be
read. |
Voltaire |
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) |
| Talent is like a faucet; while it is
open, you have to write. Inspiration? - a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance. |
Jean Anouilh |
French dramatist (1910 - 1987) |
| The artist, depicting man disdainful
of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity,
rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows. |
Berenson |
| Most joyful the Poet be;<br>It is through him that all men see. |
William E. Channing |
| To the poet, to the philosopher, to
the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| There are two classes of poets - the
poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or man. |
Horace |
Roman lyric poet & satirist
(65 BC - 8 BC) |
| Inside every man there is a poet who died young. |
Stefan Kanfer |
| Democracy is the recurrent suspicion
that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. |
E. B. White, New Yorker, July 3, 1944 |
US author & humorist (1899 -
1985) |
| A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity. |
James Russell Lowell |
| We have more poets thatnjudges and
interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem that to understand a good one. |
Michel de Montaigne |
French essayist (1533 - 1592) |
| Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written
content. |
Alfred De Musset |
| If your daily life seems poor, do
not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there
is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. |
Rainer Maria Rilke |
German lyric poet (1875 - 1926) |
| The good poet sticks to his real
loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race. |
Karl Shapiro |
| Does a poet create, originate,
initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? |
B. F. Skinner |
US psychologist (1904 - 1990) |
| Man may be considered as a superior
species of animal who produces philosophies and poems in about the same way a silkworm produces their cocoons
and bees their hives. |
Hippilyte Taine |
| Books are the carriers of
civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think
that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy,
ay, to life itself than this incessant business. |
Henry David Thoreau |
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a
helpless thing. |
Walt Whitman |
US poet (1819 - 1892) |
| There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well
written or badly written. |
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, preface |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| By listening to his language of his
locality the poet begins to learn his craft. It is his function to lift, by use of imagination and the language he hears, the
material conditions and appearances of his environment to the sphere of the
intelligence where they will have new currency. |
William Carlos Williams |
US poet (1883 - 1963) |
| No poet sings because he must sing.
At least no great poet does. A great poet sings because he chooses to sing. |
Author Unknown |
| It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are
themselves. |
Carl Jung |
Swiss psychologist (1875 - 1961) |
| There is no surer way to misread any
document than to read it literally. As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the
words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen
situation; and, evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means
final. |
Learned Hand |
| Be brave enough to live creatively.
The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the
wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work,
risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover
will be wonderful; yourself. |
Alan Alda |
US actor (1936 - ) |
| Few men during their lifetime come
anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling in them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used. |
Richard E. Byrd |
| Blaise Pascal used to mark with
charcoal the walls of his playroom, seeking a means of making a circle perfectly round and a triangle whose sides and
angle were all equal. He discovered these things for himself and then began
to seek the relationship which existed between them. He did not know any
mathematical terms and so he made up his own. Using these names he made
axioms and finally developed perfect demonstrations, until he had come to the
thirty-second proposition of Euclid. |
C. M. Cox |
| Ludwig von Beethoven had never
mastered the elements of arithmetic beyond addition and subtraction. A thirteen-year-old boy whom he had befriended
tried unsuccessfully to teach him simple multiplication and division. |
Jan Ehrenwald. |
| Emile Zola was a poor student at his
school at Aix. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we
recognize this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing
appropriately with many problems that we face in the world. |
Howard Gardner |
| The greatest thing in this world is
not so much where we are, but in which direction we are moving. |
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. |
US jurist (1841 - 1935) |
| There are powers inside of you, if
you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become. |
Orison Swett Marden |
(1850 - 1924) |
| I do not know what I may appear to
the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting himself and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary while the greater
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. |
Ashley Montagu |
| In one important respect a man is
fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less. |
John Christian Bovee |
| The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never
forget it. |
G. K. Chesterton |
English author & mystery novelist
(1874 - 1936) |
| Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is. |
Benjamin Franklin |
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790) |
| Painless poverty is better than embittered wealth. |
Greek |
| It is the great privilege of poverty
to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature
what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. |
Johnson |
| The basis of optimism is sheer terror. |
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| Poor is the man who does not know
his own intrinsic worth and tends to measure everything by relative value. A man of financial wealth who values
himself by his financial net worth is poorer than a poor man who values
himself by his intrinsic self worth. |
Sidney Madwed |
| There is a noble manner of being poor and who does not know it will never
be rich. |
Seneca |
Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD) |
| The fields were fruitful and
starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic. |
John Steinbeck |
US novelist (1902 - 1968) |
| True poverty does not come from God. |
Yiddish Proverb |
| He who ashamed of his poverty would be equally proud of his wealth. |
Author Unknown |
| If you are distressed by anything
external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at
any moment. |
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
Roman Emperor, A.D. 161-180 (121
AD - 180 AD) |
| To know the pains of power, we must
go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it. The pains of power are real;
its pleasures imaginary. |
C. C. Colton |
| The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by
unfolding of his powers. |
Erich Fromm |
US (German-born) psychologist
(1900 - 1980) |
| It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. |
Oscar Wilde, The Model Millionaire, 1912 |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| The measure of a man is what he does with power. |
Pittacus |
| Most powerful is he who has himself in his power. |
Seneca |
Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD) |
| Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the
vain that the virtuous. |
Sir Francis Bacon |
English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 - 1626) |
| There is this paradox in pride - it
makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so. |
C. C. Colton |
| Praise in the beginning is agreeable
enough; and we receive it as a favor; but when it comes in great quantities, we regard it only as a debt, which
nothing but our merit could extort. |
James Goldsmith |
| The real satisfaction which praise
can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not
endeavored to deserve well in vain. |
Johnson |
| Undeserved praise causes more pangs
of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more
completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly
underestimated. |
Friedrich Nietzsche |
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| When I was young I had an elderly
friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the
assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the
passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to
praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe
that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it. |
W. Somerset Maugham |
English dramatist & novelist
(1874 - 1965) |
| Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. |
Oscar Wilde |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| A man desires praise that he may be
reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of
success. |
Alec Waugh |
| A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward. |
Phillips Brooks |
US Episcopal bishop (1835 - 1893) |
| You pray in your distress and in
your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. |
Kahlil Gibran |
Lebanese artist & poet in US
(1883 - 1931) |
| Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays. |
Soren Kierkegaard |
Danish philosopher (1813 - 1855) |
| My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.<br>Words without
thoughts never to heaven go. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| I was the son of an immigrant. I
experienced bigotry, intolerance and prejudice, even as so many of you have. Instead of allowing these thing to embitter
me, I took them as spurs to more strenuous effort. |
Andre Bernard Buruch |
| Prejudice squints when it looks, and lies when it talks. |
Duchess de Abrantes |
| I believe that whoever tries to
think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What
can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must
have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his
children become influenced by racial bias. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Why was I born with such contemporaries? |
Oscar Wilde |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| The greatest and noblest pleasure
which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices. |
Frederick The Great |
king of Prussia 1740-1786 (1712 -
1786) |
| There is nothing respecting which a
man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices. |
Francis Jeffrey |
Scottish critic & jurist (1773
- 1850) |
| Prejudice is the conjurer of
imaginary wrongs, strangling truth, overpowering reason, making strong men weak and weak men weaker. God give us the large
hearted charity which "bearth all things, believe all things, hope all
things, endure all things," which "thinks no evil." |
Macduff |
| Everyone is a prisoner of his own
experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them. |
Edward R. Murrow |
US broadcast journalist & newscaster
(1908 - 1965) |
| In forming a judgment, lay your
hearts void of foretaken opinions; else, whatsoever is done or said, will be measured by a wrong rule; like them who have
jaundice, to whom everything appears yellow. |
Sir Philip Sidney |
English poet, politician, & soldier
(1554 - 1586) |
| Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart. |
Johann Georg Zimmermann |
| Prejudice is the reasoning of fools. |
Author Unknown |
| For the want of a nail, the shoe was
lose; for the want of a shoe the horse was lose; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and
slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail. |
Benjamin Franklin |
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790) |
| Unless you are prepared yourself to
profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you in proportion
as you have educated yourself to make use of it. |
Orison Swett Marden |
(1850 - 1924) |
| Children have neither a past nor a
future. Thus they enjoy the present - which seldom happens to us. |
Jean De La Bruyere |
French moralist (1645 - 1696) |
| Only the shallow know themselves. |
Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, 1882 |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care
of themselves. |
Lord Chesterfield |
(1694 - 1773) |
| Finish each day before you begin the
next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| However much we talk of the
inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs
everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the
inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the
present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before
our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable. |
Eric Hoffer |
(1902 - 1983) |
| We think very little of time
present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too
swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours
which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own. |
Blaise Pascal |
French mathematician, physicist
(1623 - 1662) |
| Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. |
Author Unknown |
| Work is victory. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| This I do know beyond any reasonable
doubt. Regardless of what you are doing, if you pump long enough, hard enough and enthusiastically enough, sooner
or later the effort will bring forth the reward. |
Zig Ziglar |
| Pride defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and
reverence into contempt. |
Henry Bolingbroke |
| The truth is rarely pure and never simple. |
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I |
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| We hear much of a decent pride, a
becoming proud, a noble pride, a laudable pride. Can that be decent, of which we ought to be ashamed? Can that be
becoming, of which God has set forth the deformity? Can that be noble which
God resists and is determined to abase? Can that be laudable, which God call
abominable. |
Robert Cecil |
| There is a diabolical trio existing
in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes
us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should
be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on
others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves. |
C. C. Colton |
| Pride the first peer and president of hell. |
Daniel Defoe |
| Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with
infamy. |
Benjamin Franklin |
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790) |
| Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean
advantages. |
Johnson |
| There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion. |
Reinhold Niebuhr |
US Protestant theologian (1892 -
1971) |
| Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Pride, like laudanun and other
poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself,
even in a personal sense, can please others. |
Frederick Saunders |
| To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance. |
Bishop Taylor |
| Football is a mistake. It combines
the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings. |
George F. Will |
US editor, commentator, & columnist
(1941 - ) |
| We rise in glory as we sink in pride. |
Young |
| He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them. |
Confucius |
Chinese philosopher & reformer
(551 BC - 479 BC) |
| Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it. |
George Lorimer |
| There are fine things which you mean
to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is surely yours
is the present, hence this is the time to speak the word of appreciation and
sympathy, to do the generous deed, to forgive the fault of a thoughtless
friend, to sacrifice self a little more for others. Today is the day in which
to express your noblest qualities of mind and heart, to do at least one
worthy thing which you have long postponed, and to use your God-given
abilities for the enrichment of someone less fortunate. Today you can make
your life - significant and worthwhile. The present is yours to do with as
you will. |
Grenville Kleiser |
| Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fool reform, and mortal men lay
hold on heaven. |
Young |
| The hardest work in the world is that which should have been done
yesterday. |
Author Unknown |
| The grandest of all laws is the law
of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies
better. |
John Christian Bovee |
| All progress is based on a universal
innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. |
Samuel Butler |
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| We ought not be over anxious to
encourage innovation, in case of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it
is established and it is understood. |
C. C. Colton |
| Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. |
H. H. Williams |
| All our progress is an unfolding,
like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.
Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| The world owes all its onward
impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. |
Nathaniel Hawthorne |
US author (1804 - 1864) |
| It is curious to note the old
sea-margins of human thought. Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide
themselves. |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
US poet (1807 - 1882) |
| By a peculiar prerogative, not only
each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may makes advances in morality, but all mankind together
are making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older; so
that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be
considered as one man, who never ceases to live and learn. |
Blaise Pascal |
French mathematician, physicist
(1623 - 1662) |
| The true law of the race is progress
and development. Whatever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian. |
Simms |
| Thou ought to be nice, even to
superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them. |
Thomas Fuller |
English clergyman & historian
(1608 - 1661) |
| Know the true value of time; snatch,
seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you
can do today. |
Earl of Chesterfield |
| Promptitude is not only a duty, but
is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and
energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful. |
Charles Simmons |
| In prosperity prepare for a change; in adversity hope for one. |
James Burgh |
| Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he
sings. |
Ed Gardner |
| Everything in the world may be endured, except continual prosperity. |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832) |
| Nothing is harder to direct than a
man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity. |
Plutarch |
Greek biographer & moralist
(46 AD - 120 AD) |
| Who feels no ills, should,
therefore, fear them; and when fortune smiles, be doubly cautious, lest destruction come remorseless on him, and he fall
unpitied. |
Sophocles |
Greek tragic dramatist (496 BC -
406 BC) |
| Short sentences drawn from long experiences. |
Cervantes |
| Proverbs are the literature of
reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary
of its intuitions. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Proverbs are in the world of thought
what gold coin is in the world of business - great value in small compass, and equally current among all people.
Sometimes the proverb may be false, the coin counterfeit, but in both cases
the false proves the value of the true. |
D. March |
| The Scripture vouches Solomon for
the wisest of men; and his proverbs prove him so, The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the
world over, acquired all that fame each of them by a single sentence,
consisting of two or three words. |
South |
| In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - there are
consequences. |
Robert G. Ingersoll |
| The man without a purpose is like a
ship without a rudder - waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind
and muscle into your work as God has given you. |
Thomas Carlyle |
Scottish author, essayist, & historian (1795 - 1881) |
| Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. |
Steven Wright |
US comedian and actor (1955 - ) |
| We ought not to look back unless it
is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear-brought experience. |
George Washington |
First president of US (1732 -
1799) |
| Quality is never an accident; it is
always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise
choice of many alternatives. |
William A. Foster |
| Two things, well considered, would
prevent many quarrels; first to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and
secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ in worth contending
about. |
C. C. Colton |
| In false quarrels there is no true valor. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and
lay him open. |
Sir Francis Bacon |
English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 - 1626) |
| The important thing is not to stop
questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries
of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if
one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose
a holy curiosity. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who
asks the right questions. |
Claude Levi-Strauss |
| It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. |
Thomas Paine |
US patriot & political philosopher
(1737 - 1809) |
| Man has made some machines that can
answer questions provided the facts are profusely stored in them, but we will never be able to make a machine
that will ask questions. The ability to ask the right question is more than
half the battle of finding the answer. |
Thomas J. Watson |
| Write a wise saying and your name will live forever. |
Anonymous |
| Beware of the man who knows the answer before he understands the
question. |
Author Unknown |
| An expert knows all the answers - if you ask the right questions. |
Author Unknown |
| Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and
feelings. |
R. W. Alger |
| A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. |
Miguel De Cervantes |
Spanish adventurer, author, & poet
(1547 - 1616) |
| When we would prepare the mind by a
forcible appeal, and opening quotation is a symphony precluding on the chords those tones we are about to
harmonize. |
Benjamin Disraeli |
British politician (1804 - 1881) |
| The adventitious beauty of poetry
may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Anecdotes and maxims are rich
treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation. |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832) |
| He is a benefactor of mankind who
contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur
habitually to the mind. |
Samuel Johnson |
English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784) |
| I quote others only in order the better to express myself. |
Michel de Montaigne |
French essayist (1533 - 1592) |
| Apothegms to thinking minds are the
seeds from which spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged. |
James Ramsey |
| The proverb answers where the sermon
fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly exploded in the air. |
Simms |
| Fine words! I wonder where you stole them. |
Jonathan Swift |
Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist
(1667 - 1745) |
| It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. |
Henry Peter Brougham |
| Happy is he who has laid up in his
youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading. |
Rufus Choate |
| The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of
elevated opinions. |
Christopher Dawson |
| If the riches of the Indies, or the
crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all. |
Francois Fenelon |
| The first time I read an excellent
work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the
meeting of an old one. |
James Goldsmith |
| One of the amusements of idleness is
reading without the fatigue of attention, and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied
but to be read. |
Johnson |
| Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of
themselves. |
Dorothy Parker |
US author, humorist, poet, & wit
(1893 - 1967) |
| No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. |
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu |
English letter author & poet
(1689 - 1762) |
| Read not books alone, but men, and
amongst them chiefly thyself. If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend rather
than the gloss of a sweet lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a
distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness. |
Francis Quarles |
English poet (1592 - 1644) |
| One may as well be asleep as to read
for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct. |
Sterne |
| Analysis kills spontaneity. |
Henri-Frederic Amiel |
| The world is so constructed, that if
you wish to enjoy its pleasures, you must also endure its pains. Whether you like it or not, you cannot have one
without the other. |
Swami Brahnmananda |
| Truth must necessarily be stranger
than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. |
G. K. Chesterton |
English author & mystery novelist
(1874 - 1936) |
| The pursuit of truth shall set you free - even if you never catch up with
it. |
Clarence Darrow |
US defense lawyer (1857 - 1938) |
| You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to
affairs. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time. |
George Iles |
| It is astonishing what force,
purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods. |
Margaret Fuller |
US Transcendentalist author & editor
(1810 - 1850) |
| The stupendous fact that we stand in
the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do. |
Erich Gutkind |
| Live truth instead of professing it. |
Elbert Hubbard |
US author (1856 - 1915) |
| We never fully grasp the import of
any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. |
William James |
US Pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910) |
| It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand
by itself. |
Thomas Jefferson |
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826) |
| I believe that unarmed truth and
unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil
triumphant. |
Martin Luther King |
| Truth, after all, wears a different
face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. |
James Russell Lowell |
| In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as
he sees it. |
Boris Pasternak |
| There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to
make gain. |
Titus Plautus |
| It is a very lonely life that a man leads, who becomes aware of truths
before their times. |
Thomas Brackett Reed |
| Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| There is a good side to every situation. |
David Schwartz |
| All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. |
Henry David Thoreau |
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| What is morality in any given time
or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike. |
Alfred North Whitehead |
English mathematician & philosopher
(1861 - 1947) |
| If someone offers to furnish a sure test, ask what the test was which
made the sure test sure. |
Author Unknown |
| We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on
possibilities. |
Henry Bolingbroke |
| There are few things reason can
discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency. |
Jeremy Collier |
| Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason. |
Henry Fielding |
English dramatist & novelist
(1707 - 1754) |
| All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is
to discover them. |
Galileo Galilei |
Italian astronomer & physicist
(1564 - 1642) |
| Human reason is like a drunken man
on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other. |
Luther |
| Never reason from what you do not
know. If you do, you will soon believe what is utterly against reason. |
James Ramsey |
| Strong reasons make strong actions. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| He that speaketh against his own
reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who
serves him against his reason. |
Jeremy Taylor |
English prelate (1613 - 1667) |
| To regret deeply is to live afresh. |
Henry David Thoreau |
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| Without relationships, no matter how
much wealth, fame, power, prestige and seeming success by the standards and opinions of the world one has,
happiness will constantly eluded him. |
Sidney Madwed |
| Constant kindness can accomplish
much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. |
Albert Schweitzer |
French philosopher & physician
(1875 - 1965) |
| Intellectually, religious emotions
are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it. |
John Dewey |
US educator, Pragmatist philosopher, & psychologist (1859 - 1952) |
| Nothing shocks me more in the men of
religion and their flocks than their pretensions to be the only religious people. |
Jean Guehenno |
| Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by
the dozens. |
Michel de Montaigne |
French essayist (1533 - 1592) |
| Matters of religion should never be
matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so
human a passion. |
George Santayana |
US (Spanish-born) philosopher
(1863 - 1952) |
| Religion holds the solution to all
problems of human relationship, whether they are between parents and children or nation and nation. Sooner or later,
man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power
of God. |
A. J. Toynbee |
| There is a growing suspicion that
what the world needs now is a religion that will cover the other six days of the week. |
Author Unknown |
| Religion is meant to be bread for daily use, not cake for special
occasions. |
Author Unknown |
| The slightest sorrow for sin is
sufficient if it produce amendment, and the greatest insufficient if it do not. |
C. C. Colton |
| It is never too late with us, so long as we are aware of our faults and
bear them impatiently. |
Jacobi |
| Mere sorrow, which weeps and sits
still, is not repentance. Repentance is sorrow converted into action; into a movement toward a new and better life. |
M. R. Vincent |
| We are an impossibility in an impossible universe. |
Ray Bradbury |
US science fiction author (1920
- ) |
| A good intention but fixed and
resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles
and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships,"
which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| If we have need of a strong will in
order to do good, it is still more necessary for us in order not to do evil. |
Mole |
| A good inclination is but the first
rude draught of virtue, but the finishing strokes are from the will, which, if well disposed, will by degrees perfect it, as
if all disposed will quickly deface it. |
South |
| Sin with the multitude, and your
responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong. |
Tyron Edwards |
| Much misconstruction and bitterness
are spared to him who thinks naturally upon what he owes to others rather than what he ought to expect from them. |
Madame Guizot |
| We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse. |
Rudyard Kipling |
British (Indian-born) author (1865
- 1936) |
| Man is condemned to be free; because
once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. |
Jean-Paul Sartre |
French author & existentialist philosopher (1905 - 1980) |
| As human beings, we are endowed with
freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must
shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us. |
A. J. Toynbee |
| A friend is someone who will help
you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body. |
Unknown |
Quotations by unknown authors |
| Outer space is no place for a person of breeding. |
Lady Violet Bonham Carter |
(1887 - 1969) |
| Freedom is a package deal - with it comes responsibilities and
consequences. |
Author Unknown |
| There are pauses amidst study, and
even pauses of seeming idleness, in which a process goes on which may be likened to the digestion of food. In
those seasons of repose, the powers are gathering their strength for new
efforts; as land which lies fallow recovers itself for tillage. |
J. W. Alexander |
| Certainly work is not always
required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected. |
G. Macdonald |
| You get the best out of others when you get the best out of yourself. |
Harvey Firestone |
| Before every action ask yourself.
Will this bring more monkeys on my back. Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden? |
Alfred A. Montapert |
| Our life, exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. |
Paul Valery |
French critic & poet (1871 -
1945) |
| The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures
the disease. |
Voltaire |
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) |
| Where does the violet tint end and
the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending
enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity. |
Herman Melville |
US novelist & sailor (1819 -
1891) |
| He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. |
Epicurus |
Greek philosopher (341 BC - 270
BC) |
| He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. |
Lao-Tzu |
Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531
BC) |
| He is richest who is content with the least. |
Socrates |
Greek philosopher in Athens (469
BC - 399 BC) |
| Science can be introduced to
children well or poorly. If poorly, children can be turned away from science; they can develop a lifelong antipathy; they will
be in a far worse condition than if they had never been introduced to science
at all. |
Isaac Asimov |
US science fiction novelist & scholar
(1920 - 1992) |
| In the fight between you and the world, back the world. |
Frank Zappa |
US musician, singer, & songwriter
(1940 - 1993) |
| Art and science have their meeting point in method. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| Science is but the statement of truth found out. |
Coley |
| No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment
can prove me wrong. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Concern for man himself and his fate
must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and
equations. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Science does not know its debt to
imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Children are born true scientists.
They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find
order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the
leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness,
softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: the heft,
shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart. |
R. Buckminster Fuller |
US architect & engineer (1895
- 1983) |
| Solutions- The first step toward a cure is to know what the disease is. |
Latin |
| I do not know what I may appear to
the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting himself and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell that ordinary while the greater
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. |
Isaac Newton |
English mathematician & physicist
(1642 - 1727) |
| Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else. |
Hob Broun |
| In science the credit goes to the
man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. |
Richard Osler |
| Human science is an uncertain guess. |
Edward G. Prior |
| Whereas in art nothing worth doing
can be done without genius, in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement. |
Bertrand Russell |
British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970) |
| Penicillin was indeed the product of
accidental discovery, but the discovery was made, and the knowledge developed, because certain scientists had
definite goals in mind. "Chance," Pastuer wrote, "favors only
the prepared mind." The mind must be prepared not only by scientific
training and technological know-how, but also by the awareness of social
needs. |
Saturday Review |
| Science when well-digested is nothing but good sense and reason. |
Stanilaus |
| Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions; it asks to be
surpassed and outdated. |
Max Weber |
| Someone has described science as an
orderly arrangement of what, at the moment, seems to be facts. |
Author Unknown |
| The ultimate security is your understanding of reality. |
H. Stanley Judd |
| If little else, the brain is an educational toy. |
Tom Robbins |
US novelist (1936 - ) |
| He who is always his own counselor will often have a fool for his client. |
Hunter |
| Who to himself is law, no law doth need. |
Arthur Chapman |
| For want of self-restraint many men
are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own
cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make
their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and
self-control. |
Smiles |
| To be deceived by our enemies or
betrayed by our friends in insupportable; yet by ourselves we are often content to be so treated. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| "Know thyself," said the
old philosopher, "improve thyself," saith the new. Our great object
in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on
the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within
us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| You do not need to be loved, not at
the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self.
Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will
never lose. |
Jo Coudert, "Advice From A Failure" |
| Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only
the way you see it. |
Thaddeus Golas |
| In oneself lies the whole world and
if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either
the key or the door to open, except yourself. |
J. Krishnamarti |
| Let not the sands of time get in your lunch. |
National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" |
| By these things examine thyself. By
whose rules am I acting; in whose name; in whose strength; in whose glory? What faith, humility, self-denial, and
love of God and to man have there been in all my actions? |
Jackie Mason |
US comedian (1934 - ) |
| Live to live and you will learn to live |
Portuguese Proverb |
| Before a diamond shows its
brilliancy and prismatic colors it has to stand a good deal of cutting and smoothing. |
Author Unknown |
| When you take charge of your life,
there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give
someone veto power over your life. |
Geoffrey F. Abert |
| Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others. |
Buddha |
Indian philosopher & religious leader
(563 BC - 483 BC) |
| Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| It
is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very
easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the
finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Trust yourself, then you will know how to live. |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832) |
| Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face. |
National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" |
| The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of
themselves. |
William Hazlitt |
English essayist (1778 - 1830) |
| The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our
blessings. |
Eric Hoffer |
(1902 - 1983) |
| It is difficult to make a man
miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him. |
Abraham Lincoln |
16th president of US (1809 - 1865) |
| Self-love is not opposed to the love
of other people. You cannot really love yourself and do yourself a favor without doing people a favor, and vise versa. |
Dr. Karl A. Menninger |
| He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. |
Friedrich Nietzsche |
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that
which we have in others. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Creation is a better means of
self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed. |
Vida D. Scudder |
| No one can disgrace us but ourselves. |
Josh Billings |
US Humorist (1818 - 1885) |
| Every human being, of whatever
origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. |
U Thant |
| When people do not respect us we are
sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself. |
Mark Twain |
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Think highly of yourself, for the world takes you at your own estimate. |
Author Unknown |
| Acknowledgment - If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of
other people. |
Author Unknown |
| We sleep, but the loom of life never
stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning. |
Henry Ward Beecher |
US abolitionist & clergyman
(1813 - 1887) |
| We never shall have any more time we have, and we have always had, all
the time there is. |
Dr. Thomas Arnold Bennett |
| An inch of time cannot be bought with an inch of gold. |
Chinese Proverb |
| It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time
that others waste. |
Henry Ford |
US automobile industrialist (1863
- 1947) |
| Most of us think ourselves as
standing wearily and helplessly at the center of a circle bristling with tasks, burdens, problems, annoyance, and
responsibilities which are rushing in upon us. At every moment we have a
dozen different things to do, a dozen problems to solve, a dozen strains to
endure. We see ourselves as overdriven, overburdened, overtired. This is a
common mental picture and it is totally false. No one of us, however crowded
his life, has such an existence. What is the true picture of your life?
Imagine that there is an hour glass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the
top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand
can pass through it at a time. That is the true picture of your life, even on
a super busy day, The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time.
That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many
problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file. You want to gain
emotional poise? Remember the hourglass, the grains of sand dropping one by
one. |
James Gordon Gilkey |
| To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means
something - something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors,
such an odd eccentric instant was without significance - did not even exist.
In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time. |
Aldous Huxley |
English critic & novelist
(1894 - 1963) |
| Look not mournfully into the Past.
It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear,
and a manly heart. |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
US poet (1807 - 1882) |
| Set priorities for your goals. A
major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved
is that we spend our time doing second things first. |
Robert J. McKain |
| When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets. |
Friedrich Nietzsche |
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| Half our life is spent trying to
find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. |
Will Rogers |
US humorist & showman (1879 -
1935) |
| The greatest loss of time is delay
and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to
that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an
uncertainty. |
Seneca |
Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD) |
| Lost wealth may be replaced by
industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever. |
Samuel Smiles |
| Get into the habit of asking yourself if what you are doing can be
handled by someone else. |
Author Unknown |
| Time invested in improving ourselves cuts down on time wasted in
disapproving of others. |
Author Unknown |
| To save time is to lengthen life. |
Author Unknown |
| There are many men whose tongues might govern multitudes if they could
govern their tongues. |
George D. Prentice |
| Open your mouth and purse
cautiously; and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great. |
Johann Georg Zimmermann |
| A love for tradition has never
weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril. |
Sir Winston Churchill |
British politician (1874 - 1965) |
| He who esteems trifles for
themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be
put, is a philosopher. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| One kernel is felt in a hogshead;
one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire help to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble,
too poor to be of service. Think of this and act. |
Hannah More |
| A little and a little, collected
together, become a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop makes an inundation. |
Saadi |
Persian poet (1184 - 1291) |
| The wise man thinks about his
troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about others things. |
Bertrand Russell |
British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970) |
| The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes that he who distrusts
them. |
Conte Di Camillo Benso Cavour |
| I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a
quitter. |
Steven Pearl |
| Error always addresses the passions
and prejudices; truth scorns such mean intrigue, and only addresses the understanding and the conscience. |
Azel Backus |
| One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth. |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
English dramatist, novelist, & politician (1803 - 1873) |
| We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions
about them. |
Jeremy Collier |
| As time goes on, new and remoter
aspects of truth are discovered which can seldom be fitted into creeds that are changeless. |
Clarence Day |
| The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Funny how people despise platitudes,
when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude. |
Katharine Fullerton Gerould |
| Truth is tough. It will not break,
like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. |
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. |
US jurist (1841 - 1935) |
| The only atheism is the denial of truth. |
Arthur Lynch |
| According to Democritus, truth lies
at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however,
that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen
their own image and adored it instead. |
Charles Richter |
| My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the
world. |
George Bernard Shaw |
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. |
Jerome K. Jerome, "Three Men in a Boat", 1889 |
British humor writer (1859 - 1927) |
| Every one wishes to have truth on
his side, but it is not everyone sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth. |
Richard Whately |
| We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the
loss of it. |
J. M. Barrie |
| People in high life are hardened to
the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains. |
G. K. Chesterton |
English author & mystery novelist
(1874 - 1936) |
| The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is
comprehensible. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Let this be understood, then, at
starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and
enterprise is not only essential in securing the success which you seek but
it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment
of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. So, day by day, and
week by week; so month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that
progress gain in strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when
success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you
prepared to receive it and keep it. |
Josiah Gilbert Holland |
| When we talk about understanding,
surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely-- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when
you give your whole attention to it. |
J. Krishnamutri |
| Folks never understand the folks they hate. |
James Russell Lowell |
| The defects of the understanding, like those of the face, grow worse as
we grow old. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Understand clearly that when a great
need appears a great use appears also; when there is a small need there is small use; it is obvious, then, that
full use is made of all things at all times according to the necessity
thereof. |
Dogen Zenji |
| You can choose to be happy or sad
and whichever you choose that is what you get. No one is really responsible to make someone else happy, no matter
what most people have been taught and accept as true. |
Sidney Madwed |
| The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
has. |
Will Rogers, Illiterate Digest (1924), "Helping the Girls with their
Income Taxes" |
US humorist & showman (1879 -
1935) |
| Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. |
William Shakespeare |
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| We live in a vastly complex society
which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to
suspect we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty. |
Euell Gibbons |
| It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance. |
Thomas H. Huxley |
English biologist (1825 - 1895) |
| Everyone values things differently.
In other words, they place their own value on everything that affects their lives. Also from moment to moment they may
even change their values. Such as a person, who values diamonds above all
else, might be willing to trade a gallon of diamonds for a drink of water to
save his life in a desert. What this means is value is a relative thing
depending on a need or a perceived need. Yet, how many people will argue and
even violently fight over the perceived value of something or some idea only
later have an entirely different view point or value. |
Sidney Madwed |
| Never value the valueless. The trick is to know how to recognize it. |
Sidney Madwed |
| A thing moderately good is not so
good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. |
Thomas Paine |
US patriot & political philosopher
(1737 - 1809) |
| On a group of theories one can found
a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men. |
Ignazio Silone |
| Most people pay too much for the things they get for nothing. |
Author Unknown |
| People care more about being thought to have taste than about being good,
clever, or amiable. |
Samuel Butler |
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| Today you can go to a gas station
and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money. |
Joey Bishop |
US actor & comedian (1918
- ) |
| To ask for advice is in nine cases out of ten to ask for flattery. |
John Churton Collins |
| Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of
mortification. |
Alice Thomas Ellis |
| Offended vanity is the great separator in social life. |
Arthur Helps |
| The general cry is against
ingratitude, but the complaint is misplaced, it should be against vanity; none but direct villains are capable of willful
ingratitude; but almost everybody is capable of thinking he hath done more
that another deserves, while the other thinks he hath received less than he
deserves. |
Alexander Pope |
English poet & satirist (1688
- 1744) |
| Vanity makes us do more things against inclination than reason. |
Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
French author & moralist (1613
- 1680) |
| Vanity is the quicksand of reason. |
George Sands |
| To be able under all circumstances
to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity,
earnestness and kindness. |
Confucius |
Chinese philosopher & reformer
(551 BC - 479 BC) |
| Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with
ourselves. |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Organized crime in America takes in
over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies. |
Woody Allen |
US movie actor, comedian, & director
(1935 - ) |
| Were there but one virtuous man in
the world, he would hold up his head with confidence and honor; he would shame the world, and not the world him. |
South |
| War like any other racket, pays high
dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit. |
General Smedley Butler |
| The best soldiers are not warlike. |
Chinese |
| The master class has always declared
the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose,
while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially
their lives. |
Eugene V. Debs |
| To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary
murder. |
Albert Einstein |
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It
is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of
iron. |
Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech
before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1963 |
US general & Republican politician
(1890 - 1969) |
