The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

There is no death. Only a change of worlds.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

Maybe you have to know darkness before you can appreciate the light.

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

My toughest fight was with my first wife.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern; no idea is so modernthat it will not someday be antiquated.

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.

I bought some batteries, but they weren't included.

It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

EVERY path may lead you to God, even the weird ones. Most of us are on a journey. We’re looking for something, though we’re not always sure what that is. The way is foggy much of the time. I suggest you slow down and follow some of the side roads that appear suddenly in the mist.

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as close to heaven as you can get. Without this - with work which you despise, which bores you can which the world does not need - this life is hell.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

My Karma ran over your dogma.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.

Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Buy on the rumor; sell on the news.

If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around.

If you don't get a kick out of the job you are doing you'd better hunt another one.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

The world is full of suffering but it is also full of people overcoming it.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

For none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

The wise man does not permit himself to set up even in his own mind any comparisons of his friends. His friendship is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by many qualities.

Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

There are three things which if one does not know, one cannot live long in the world: what is too much for one, what is too little for one, and what is just right for one.

Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.

Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

However often you may have done them a favour, if you once refuse they forget everything except your refusal.

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.

We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.

To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.

Bear in mind, if you are going to amount to anything, that your success does not depend upon the brilliancy and the impetuosity with which you take hold, but upon the ever lasting and sanctified bulldoggedness with which you hang on after you have taken hold.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

As I was walking up the stairI met a man who wasn't there.He wasn't there again today.I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

There are people who make things happen,those who watch what happens,and those who wonder what happened.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can't buy.

The only person you should ever compete with is yourself. You can't hope for a fairer match.

Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.

I can name the newscaster on The Simpsons, but I can't name my own congressman. And that's what makes America great.

It violates right order whenever capital so employees the working or wage-earning classes as to divert business and economic activity entirely to its own arbitrary will and advantage without, the social character of economic life, social justice, and the common good.

If thy words be too luxuriant, confine them, lest they confine thee. He that thinks he can never speak enough, may easily speak too much. A full tongue and an empty brain are seldom parted.

The pride of youth is in strength and beauty, the pride of old age is in discretion.

Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.In thinking, keep to the simple.In conflict, be fair and generous.In governing, don't try to control.In work, do what you enjoy.In family life, be completely present.

Practice, the master of all things.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Every one wishes to have truth on his side, but it is not everyone sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time.

The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

It is better to sit alone than in company with the bad; and it is, better still to sit with the good than alone. It is better to speak to a seeker of knowledge than to remain silent; but silence is better than idle words.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by a dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in a magnificient glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

If you talk enough, you don't feel you have to _do_ anything.

The living need charity more than the dead.

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.

There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.

I think the world is run by 'C' students.

It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.

I you don't have a leg to stand on, you can't put your foot down.

Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world.

Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?

Science is the record of dead religions.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Some day my boat will come in, and with my luck I'll be at the airport.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

The reward for a thing well done is to have done it.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always and indeed then most truly when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.

Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

...A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man can not be great.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Occasionally, I have to think like myself to remember where I put something.

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

Only when the last tree has been cut downOnly when the last river has been poisonedOnly when the last fish has been caughtOnly then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

Children have more need of models than of critics.

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fool reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.

At points of clarity, I realize that my life on earth is meaningless, and that I am merely a pawn in a bigger game. A game I cannot possible understand or have control of. Thankfully, before depression sets in, I drift back into my cloudy, bewildered daily routine.

Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems.

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

Imagination is more important than knowledge...

If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

War is not nice.

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.

Wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves.

Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful.

If studidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.

Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Many people seem to think that opportunity means a chance to get money without earning it.

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.

If you are near the enemy, make him believe you are far from him.If you are far from the enemy, make him believe you are near.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson.

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.

When of a gossiping circle it was asked, "What are they doing?" The answer was, "Swapping lies."

Time invested in improving ourselves cuts down on time wasted in disapproving of others.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

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.

Opportunities are often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be listening.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

In jealousy there is more of self-love, than of love to another.

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

This art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men.

Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig, then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy.

One day at a time- this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.

The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.

Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt.

Truth is a fire that burns and shines.

The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things--the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

It is no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

Don't be content by just beating others expectations, beat your own expectations as well. And you should expect nothing less but to win.

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

I keep pointing at the child; they keep staring at my finger.

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

Do you know what is better than charity and fasting and prayer? It is keeping peace and good relations between people, as quarrels and bad feelings destroy mankind.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.

My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.

Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.

Sow and act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap destiny.

The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as clear and simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing.

A life spent making mistakes is not only most honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?

Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.

Love is an attachment to another self. Humor is a form of self-detachment -- a way of looking at one's existence, one's misfortune, or one's discomfort. If you really love, if you really know how to laugh, the result is the same: you forget yourself.

Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady.

People are like stained glass windows; they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within.

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enought to know they were impossible.

You only live once; but if you live it right, once is enough.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

The brave man is not without fear, the brave man does what he must despite his fear.

In every child who is born under no matter what circumstances and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again, and in him, too, once more, and each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life: toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terrorism, and of God.

Any time you pull down a fence, always ask why it was put there in the first place.

It's very easy to feel someone's pain when you love them.

There's only so much you can do, but if somebody doesn't give you a chance there is nothing you can do.

Bygone troubles are a pleasure to talk about.

He who divides and shares is left with the best share.

Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy.

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization.

We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

I have plentyof common sense! I just choose to ignore it.

I dream for a living.

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Feelings are real and legitimate; children behave and misbehave for a reason, even if adults cannot figure it out.

We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.

SUCCESS, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows. In literature, and particularly in poetry, the elements of success are exceedingly simple, and are admirably set forth in the following lines by the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape, entitled, for some mysterious reason, "John A. Joyce."The bard who would prosper must carry a book,Do his thinking in prose and wearA crimson cravat, a far-away lookAnd a head of hexameter hair.Be thin in your thought and your body'll be fat;If you wear your hair long you needn't your hat.

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts about reality.

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Tempt not a desperate man.

No nice men are good at getting taxis.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

"What made the deepest impression upon you?" inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, "when you stood in the presence of the Falls of Niagara, the greatest of natural wonders?" ---- "The thing that stuck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls," Lincoln responded with the characteristic deliberation, "was where in the world did all that water come from?"

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women… merely adored.

So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else.

The best way to divulge a secret is to tell someone not to say anything about it.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

Because he has never forgiven himself any fault, he can forgive no one else's.

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

The old lie; Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.(Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland)

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.

It is your attitude at the beginning of a task that determines success or failure.

The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.

All my possessions for a moment of time.

Traveling there was really boring so I headed for the ditch. It was a rough ride but I met more interesting people there.

I've got a twisted sense of humor, and everything amuses me.

A mistake may mark a man, but admiting a mistake is the mark of a man.

Reverence for life brings us into a spiritual relation with the world which is independent of all knowledge of the universe.

It doesn't matter if you win or lose in the big, scary jungle of the real world. Winners and losers... Enemies and allies... We don't live in a comic book! This is the real deal.

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought.

PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today,Tomorrow will be dying.

Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts:Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering pouredAvails; no altars hath he, nor is soothedBy hymns of praise. From him alone of allThe powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

Shall ignorance of good and illDare to direct the eternal will?Seek virtue, and of that possest,To Providence resign the rest.

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

Sanity is a cozy lie.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

They say that women talk too much. If you have worked in congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

The First Lady is an unpaid public servant elected by one person --- her husband.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you can make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost....

I’m telling you, things are getting out of hand. Or maybe I’m discovering that things were never in my hands.

The very essence of love is uncertainty.

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train - Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?

He conquers who endures.

If the truth be known, most successes are built on a multitude of failures.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

If a pessimist is always right, is he a realist?

It is a very serious duty, perhaps of all duties the most serious, to look into one's own character and conduct, and accurately read one's own heart. It is virtually looking into eternity, and all its vast and solemn realities, which must appear delightful or awful, according as the heart appears to be conformed or not conform to God.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

Behind almost every woman you ever heard of stands a man who let her down.

Love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is indifference.

Keep cool and you command everybody.

Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.

It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.

The fundamental qualities for good execution of a plan is first; intelligence; then discernment and judgment, which enable one to recognize the best method as to attain it; the singleness of purpose; and, lastly, what is most essential of all, will-stubborn will.

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

If you make the world a little better, then you have accomplished a great deal.

Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.

I want to change the pop world one sequin at a time. Artists tend to take themselves way too seriously and don't enjoy the fun of making an impact on culture. I just have a good time and sequins represent a good time.

The neurotic and the artist - since both live out the unconscious of the race - reveal to us what is going to emerge endemically in the society later on.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do things. If you make a chair, you want to make a nice chair. You want people to admire it. I think doing something well is a form of respect for humanity in general. I have found that all incompetence comes from not paying attention, which comes from people doing something that they don't want to do. And doing what you don't want to do means either you have no choice, or you don't think that the moments of your life are worth fighting for.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thoughts or action we should remember our dying and try so to live, that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_ -- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: _Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum_ -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right.

Getting caught is the mother of invention.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

When there's a lot of light, you don't notice the dark. When there's a lot of dark you always notice the light.

I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

If you're here for four more years or four more weeks, you're here right now. I think when you're somewhere, you ought to be there. It's not about how long you stay in a place, it's about what you do while you're there, and when you go, is that place any better for your having been there?

Dick, frankly you do not have the war plan... which makes me quite happy.

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

Without doubt one always looks more carefully at what one believes must be seen by many than at what one does only for oneself, and often the things that have seemed to me to be true when I began to concieve them have appeared false to me when I wanted to put them on paper.

Until you can measure something and express it in numbers, you have only the begining of understanding.

I am more afriad of an army of 100 sheep lead by a lion than an army of 100 lions lead by a sheep.

To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan... believe... act!

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel.

One day the factory sports coach, who was very strict, pointed at four boys, including me, and ordered us to run in a race. I protested that I was weak and not fit to run, but the coach sent me for a physical examination and the doctor said that I was perfectly well. So I had to run, and when I got started I felt I wanted to win. But I only came in second. That was the way it started.

Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.

Gold for friends,Lead for foes.

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

Praise youth and it will prosper.

I am in fact a Hobbit, in all but size.

I always have to dream up there against the stars. If I don't dream I will make it, I won't even get close.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.

The worst is notSo long as we can say, "This is the worst."

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Just turn left at Greenland...

Whatever God's dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates.

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.

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.

Early morning hath gold in its mouth.

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.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

Maybe it would be better to acknowledge, like the Greeks, that a lot of behavior we call addiction is really a love of pleasure that carries the force of habit. We become addicted mostly because of the central issue in all self-control problems, which is the disproportionate value we place on short-term rewards.

The world is full of fools; and he who would not wish to see one, must not only shut himself up alone, but must also break his looking-glass.

Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded faith.

Exercise alone provides psychological and physical benefits. However, if you also adopt a strategy that engages your mind while you exercise, you can get a whole host of psychological benefits fairly quickly.

I would fain die a dry death.

I already knew to eat clean and listen to my body, to only eat when I was in a calm mental state. Everyone knew. But when you're fat in the head, it's never about knowing the answers. It's about living them.

Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it. That should convince you that the atom will always be a sink of energy and never a reservoir of energy.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximumutilization of the ability that you have.

It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

It is not enough to limit your love to your own nation, to your own group. You must respond with love even to those outside of it. . . . This concept enables people to live together not as nations, but as the human race.

It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous."

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.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.

Some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

That is the American story. People, just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren't doing it for the money. Their titles weren't fancy. But they changed the course of history and so can you.

Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

My eyes are an ocean in which my dreams are reflected.

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.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

The primary purpose of education is not to teach you to earn your bread, but to make every mouthful sweeter.

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

There is no being of any race who, if he finds the proper guide, cannot attain to virtue.

The Way is harshness greeted with kindness, fear greeted with fortitude.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

The chief proof of mans greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to form of mental agoraphobia and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters, they are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude through our own apathy.

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are creatures of despair.

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified performance.

Property left to a child may soon be lost; but the inheritance of virtue--a good name an unblemished reputation--will abide forever. If those who are toiling for wealth to leave their children, would but take half the pains to secure for them virtuous habits, how much more serviceable would they be. The largest property may be wrested from a child, but virtue will stand by him to the last.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery.

It has just been twenty-three years since I began to wander. In the next twenty-three years I wonder if there will come a time when life is no longer a wonderful adventure; when there is not some interesting experience in things or personalities waiting just around the corner. If that time does come, I hope that my release will be swift.

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

In the career of glory one gains many things; the gout and medals, a pension and rheumatism....And also frozen feet, an arm or leg the less, a bullet lodged between two bones which the surgeon cannot extract....all of these fatigues experienced in your youth, you pay for when you grow old. Because one has suffered in years gone by, it is necessary to suffer more, which does not seem exactly fair.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

I've never struck a woman in my life, not even my own mother.

Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help.

A man, to be greatly good, must magine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and in many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Childhood has no forebodings, but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in the worlds of time.

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.

Forgiveness does not always lead to a healed relationship. Some people are not capable of love, and it might be wise to let them go along with your anger. Wish them well, and let them go their way.

Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.

Cursed be he that moves my bones.

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples' models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.

Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance,And toss them on the wheels of Chance.

Don't accept rides from strange men, and remember that all men are strange.

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

To sin in silence while others doth protest makes cowards out of men.

Come unto these yellow sands,And then take hands:Courtsied when you have, and kiss'dThe wild waves whist.

Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings.

Men have conceived a twofold use of sleep; it is a refreshing of the body in this life, and a preparing of the soul for the next.

We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

And dreams in their development have breath,And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,They take a weight from off our waking toils,They do divide our being.

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

The wages of sin are unreported.

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now,Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Alleluia! We do not have to be right! We do have to love, to be vulnerable, to accept joy and pain, and to grow through them.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into patients of whom they know nothing.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent reliefs we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life.

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

Please choose the way of peace. ... In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials; it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.

Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do it enough to impress themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.

Most joyful the Poet be;It is through him that all men see.

I don't care what your liberal agenda is, you'll never accomplish anything if the people don't trust us with their money, and they don't trust us Democrats.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. All you have to do is tell them that they are in danger of being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.

An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.

You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

The quality will remain when the price is forgotten.

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

Shortchange your education now and you may be short of change the rest of your life.

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

The best index to a person's character is(a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and(b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Like President Reagan, President Bush has not shied from calling evil by its name or declaring his intention to defeat its latest incarnation, terrorism, just as free men and women of all political persuasions, here and abroad, defeated fascism and communism before.

Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs.

I've never gotten over what they call stagefright. I go through it every show. I'm pretty concerned, I'm pretty much thinking about the show. I never get completely comfortable with it, and I don't let the people around me get comfortable with it, in that I remind them that it's a new crowd out there, it's a new audience, and they haven't seen us before. So it's got to be like the first time we go on.

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.

Any great work of art . . . revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world -- the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Peace at home is peace in the country. Peace in the country is peace in the world.

You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.

If a child lives with approval, he learns to live with himself.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Resistance is useless.

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.

Live truth instead of professing it.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

All the world's a cage.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.

The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

Reality is something you rise above.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

It is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.

There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as "nutty methods." Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as "a complete waste of time."

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.

A word to the wise is enough.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor-General.

I am not an American who "will cut the cloth of my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?

If happiness could be brought, few of us could pay the price.

Quality is never an accident.

Shallow understanding accompanies poor compassion, great understanding goes with great compassion.

I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.

If one speaks or acts with a cruel mind, misery follows, as the cart follows the horse... If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows, as a shadow follows its source.

Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them.

With foxes we must play the fox.

All things are difficult before they are easy.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Money is the sinew of love as well as war.

There is no gravity. The earth sucks.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as can help in making his fortune.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant perhaps the one is as painful as the other.

A good life is a series of joyful meetings and joyful moments.

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.

Our repeated failure to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. It is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable.

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Since when was genius found respectable?

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.

There is a growing suspicion that what the world needs now is a religion that will cover the other six days of the week.

First it is necessary to stand on your own two feet. But the minute a man finds himself in that position, the next thing he should do is reach out his arms.

Instant gratification takes too long.

We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities.

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

Ah, what shall I be at fifty,should nature keep me alive,if I find the world so bitterwhen I am but twenty-five?

One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.

That is not dead which can eternal lieAnd with strange aeons even death may die.

When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

So we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.

It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Everyone should free their mind and soul. Some are ready to free them now, and some will be ready to free them in the future. Some will never be ready and that is what makes their lives not worth living.

Strong reasons make strong actions.

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

The ingredients of health and long life, are great temperance, open air, easy labor, and little care.

All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat!?' I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.

War is cruel and you cannot refine it.

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.

Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Would you want to do business with a person who was 99% honest?

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

There's a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one from another; therefore, let all take heed as to the society in which they mingle, for in a little while they will be like it.

When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.

Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which might have surprized a judicious person, who had observed the tranquillity with which she bore all the affronts to her chastity; but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.

With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter!

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grandmother used to say, 'The black cat is always the last one off the fence.' I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly true.

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.

My work is a game, a very serious game.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can't be forever violated with impunity.

If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I’m a German, and Germany will say that I’m a jew.

A wise man's day is worth a fool's life.

Shopping is better than sex. If you're not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.

He who multiplies riches multiplies cares.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.

Health food makes me sick.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose.

To think is to act.

The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Do not be wise in words - be wise in deeds.

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.

You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Friendship improves hapiness and reduces misery, by doubting our joys and dividing our grief.

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope.

STRATEGY is; A style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring FUTURE SUCCESS.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.

Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.

We two are to ourselves a crowd.

Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

Success, in a generally accepted sense of the term, means the opportunity to experience and to realize to the maximum the forces that are within us.

The main source of our wealth is goodness. The affections and the generous qualities that God admires in a world full of greed.

The art of conversation consist as much in listening politely, as in talking agreeably.

He who has not a good memory should never take upon himself the trade of lying.

He that cannot decidedly say, "No," when tempted to evil, is on the highway to ruin. He loses the respect even of those who would tempt him, and becomes but the pliant tool and victim of their evil designs.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.

Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.

War is like love; it always finds a way.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Conceit is God's gift to little men.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

There's no fool like an old fool --- you can't beat experience.

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Feeding the starving poor only increases their number.

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.

She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.

Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Why have many saints been so perfectly contemplative? Because they always studied to mortify themselves from worldly desires, that they might freely, with all the power of their heart, tend to our Lord.

When we can say "no" not only to things that are wrong and sinful, but also to things pleasant, profitable, and good which would hinder and clog our grand duties and our chief work, we shall understand more fully what life is worth, and how to make the most of it.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.

He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.

Lies are usually caused by undue fear of men.

I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solved each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They kept going regardless of the obstacles they met.

A great leader never sets himself above his followers except in carrying responsibilities.

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.

FLOP, v. Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.

When we are born, we cry, that we are comeTo this great stage of fools.

There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are and doing things as they ought to be done.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God-but to create him.

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Oscar Wilde said, 'The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.' He’s got it wrong. The unrestrained appeasement of desire only expands hungers. Does not our experience tell us so?

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.

Weak people cannot be sincere.

Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow color blind.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government."

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.

We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.

It is better to wear out than to rust out.

You will make all kinds of mistakes but as long as you are generous and true and fierce you cannot hurt the world, or even seriously distress her.

A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning.

Nine out of ten people who change their minds are wrong the second time too.

Necessity has no law.

Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, "Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."

All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.

He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so.

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.

He conquered with his weapons, but was conquered by his vices.

We shape our buildings and they shape us.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?Expediency asks the question - is it politic?Vanity asks the question - is it popular?But conscience asks the question - is it right?And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don't.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say:”We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.... But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

The biggest shortage of all is the shortage of common sense.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

If you tell a lie -- tell a big one.

He [Somoza] may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.

I am grateful for even the sharpest criticism, as long as it sticks to the point.(Ich bin dankbar fur die schärfste Kritik, wenn sie nur sachlich bleibt.)

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Slight not what's near, while aiming at what's far.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.

FORCE, n."Force is but might," the teacher said --"That definition's just."The boy said naught but through instead,Remembering his pounded head:"Force is not might but must!"

For good or ill, your conversation is your advertisement. Every time you open your mouth you let men look into your mind. Do they see it well clothed, neat, busineswise?

He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'

He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this still livelier motion.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

Success isn't necessarily permanent - but neither is failure.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.

The secret of success is to do all you can do without thought of success.

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force... If we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.

Good place to put things--cellars.

It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.

Exterminate.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

FRIENDLESS, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

Go ahead, make my day.

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

The game of life is not much in holding a good hand, as in playing a poor hand well.

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least with are the greatest babblers.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

He who feels no compassion will become insane.

When an individual fear or apathy passes by the unfortunate, life is of no account.

Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Life is an escalator: You can move forward or backward; you can not remain still.

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

Blessed are those who can give without remembering, and take without forgetting.

Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

The course of life is unpredictable, no one can write his autobiography in advance.

Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor.

A little tact and wise management may often evade resistance, and carry a point, where direct force might be in vain.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.

He who lives by the sword, will eventually be wiped out by some bastard with a sawn off shotgun

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity.

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given.

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.

There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted.

What is life but being conscious? And good and evil are manifestations of consciousness. If you reject one, you're not getting the whole thing that's there to be had.

Popularity? It is glory's small change.

A gift, with a kind countenance, is a double present.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others

Life is a tough proposition and the first hundred years are the hardest.

To live is to function. That is all there is in living.

When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

KISS, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss." It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding; but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.

The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

The test of a first-fate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

There is no wealth but life.

Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future.

Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice.

A really great man is known by three signs... generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.

Never give a sucker an even break.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It's a messy business, life. It's hard to figure--full of surprises. Some good. Some bad.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

The good devout man first makes inner preparation for the actions he has later to perform. His outward actions do not draw him into lust and vice; rather it is he who bends them into the shape of reason and right judgement. Who has a stiffer battle to fight than the man who is striving to conquer himself.

The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity.

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

Reason and emotion are not antagonists. What seems like a struggle is a struggle between two opposing ideas or values, one of which, automatic and unconscious, manifests itself in the form of a feeling.

Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.

What I wanted to do was work with kids with behavioral and emotional handicaps. It's a puzzle, learning each child, because each child is different.

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.

When we are capable of living in the moment free from the tyranny of "shoulds," free from the nagging sensation that this moment isn't right, we will have peaceful hearts.

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

The law must be stable, but it must not stand still.

Why don't you want to do what you know you should do? The reason you don't is that you are in conflict with yourself.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Government, is the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

All confidence which is not absolute and entire, is dangerous. There are few occasions but where a man ought either to say all, or conceal all; for, how little so ever you have revealed of your secret to a friend, you have already said too much if you think it not safe to make him privy to all particulars.

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

No matter how hard you work for success if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible.

Any colour - so long as it's black.

He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.

GORGON, n.The Gorgon was a maiden boldWho turned to stone the Greeks of oldThat looked upon her awful brow.We dig them out of ruins now,And swear that workmanship so badProves all the ancient sculptors mad.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.

Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim.

Revolution is not a onetime event.

Visible goodwill is the strongest negotiation strategy. Don't let somebody else determine your behavior.

[Spring is] when life's alive in everything.

We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we all take a little of each other everywhere.

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

Procrastination is the thief of time.

Simplicity is the peak of civilization.

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

If you don't risk anything you risk even more.

Our envy of others devours us most of all.

I will not add another word.

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.

I bet you if I had met him [Trotsky] and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn't like.

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning.

Conscience has nothing to do as lawgiver or judge; but is a witness against me if I do wrong, and which approves if I do right. To act against conscience is to act against reason and God's Law.

It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.

LOW-BRED, adj. "Raised" instead of brought up.

"It happens to each according to his consciousness," is the Law of Consciousness.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.

I cannot live without books.

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty, it is it's own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving.

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.

To get the best out of a man go to what is best in him.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

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

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.

Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; but love from look, toward school with heavy looks.

When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

GRAPE, n.Hail noble fruit! -- by Homer sung,Anacreon and Khayyam;Thy praise is ever on the tongueOf better men than I am.The lyre in my hand has never swept,The song I cannot offer:My humbler service pray accept --I'll help to kill the scoffer.The water-drinkers and the cranksWho load their skins with liquor --I'll gladly bear their belly-tanksAnd tap them with my sticker.Fill up, fill up, for wisdom coolsWhen e'er we let the wine rest.Here's death to Prohibition's fools,And every kind of vine-pest!Jamrach Holobom

Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.

We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

I dwell in possibility...

The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits that under analysis some of them won't stand up either.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

A week is a long time in politics.

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Too often we...enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

We do not inherit this land from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

Always try to do something for the other fellow and you will be agreeably surprised how things come your way - how many pleasing things are done for you.

When mom found my diaphram, I told her it was a bathing cap for my cat.

Learn to be pleased with everything; with wealth, so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

Marvelous Truth, confront us at every turn, in every guise.

When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears.

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

Partake of some of life's sweet pleasures. And yes, get comfortable with yourself.

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

For a thinking creature of high intellect there can be no pleasure separate from emotion. If you deny men emotion you deny them pleasure.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it.

We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and never allow the President and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.

Truth has beauty, power and necessity.

Van Gogh became a painter because he had no ear for music.

Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Courage is grace under pressure.

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

He who laughs last didn't get it.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority.

You don't just luck into things as much as you'd like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it's friendships or opportunities.

I was brought up to believe that how I saw myself was more important than how others saw me.

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.

There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one's own.

According to classical aerodynamics, it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly.

A suspicious mind always looks on the black side of things.

All of the significant battles are waged within the self.

But did thee feel the earth move?

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death.

Ever notice that what the hell is always the right decision?

Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

My bounce-around life had taught me that dreams were dangerous things - they look solid in your mind, but you just try to reach for them. It's like gathering clouds.

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

HEAT, n.Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a modeOf motion, but I know now how he's provingHis point; but this I know -- hot words bestowedWith skill will set the human fist a-moving,And where it stops the stars burn free and wild._Crede expertum_ -- I have seen them, child.Gorton Swope

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with yourself.

I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.

ME, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones!

Sometimes we are lucky enough to know our lives have been changed, to discard the old and embrace the new and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me... on that summer's day when my eyes were opened to the sea.

What you risk reveals what you value.

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

An idea is a feat of association.

Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.

'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.

Dare to be yourself.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

There is no They, Only Us.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

If it is to be, it is up to me.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

He had a certain frankness and generosity, qualities indeed which turn to a man's ruin, unless tempered with discretion.

MAMMALIA, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

In every aspect of our lives, we are always asking ourselves, How am I of value? What is my worth? Yet I believe that worthiness is our birthright.

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.

Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.

It should be a very happy marriage --- they are both so much in love with him.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.

PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

All the world is queer save thee and me. And even thou art a little queer.

The ultimate indignity is to be given a bedpan by a stranger who calls you by your first name.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.

There's a pinch of the madman in every great man.

This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

We must dare to think "unthinkable" thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about "unthinkable things" because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.

A promise made is a debt unpaid.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

A man is so in the way in the house.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.

Sport is imposing order on what was chaos.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture than you are a victim of it.

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing.

Character can not be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Heirlooms we don't have in our family. But stories we've got.

If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.

Daughters go into analysis hating their fathers and come out hating their mothers. They never come out hating themselves.

Here's a message to the new borns, waiting to breathe: if you believe then you can achieve. Just look at me, against all odds 'though life is hard, we carry on, livin' in the projects, broke with no lights on. To all the seeds that follow me- protect your essence, born with less, but you still precious.

We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.

To play it safe is not to play.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

The real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.

I am my nearest neighbour.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

You can never plan the future by the past.

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Baby: an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other.

When I'm good, I'm very, very good. When I'm bad, I'm better.

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something.

The resounding echo of the mortal coil, echoes in the ears of those who are unprepared for it. To some, it sounds like a symphony - to others, a death toll.

No man deserves punishment for his thoughts.

It is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.

One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.

Politeness is half good manners and half good lying.

It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case; God has written all the books.

It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of a good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart which God did not design them to fill, this is covetousness.

Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think the fellow was crazy, then you want to pay some attention to that. One of you is likely to be, and you had better find out which one it is. It makes an awful lot of difference.

No matter how love-sick a woman is, she shouldn't take the first pill that comes along.

A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed.

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

'Tis better to hear a truth which brings a tear, than a lie which brings a smile.

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

A fool judges people by the presents they give him.

War does not determine who is right-only who is left.

This is on me.

I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a wounded squire pulling arrows out from his wound to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birth right but is defined by one's action.

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year --- everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.

Life is beautiful. Life is sad.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong.

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Have you ever taken something out of the clothes hamper because it had become, relatively, the cleanest thing?

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.

I am treating you as my friend asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

My life may not be scintillating. But living it is more interesting than watching yours.

Do not be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

The joy of a spirit is the measure of its power.

From the persistence of noise comes the insistence of rage.From the emergence of tone comes the divergence of thought.From the enlightenment of music comes the wisdom of... silence.

The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?

Until you lose your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

Can I ever know you Or you know me?

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high.

Everyone who gets sleepy at night should have a simple decent place to lay their heads, on terms they can afford to pay.

Eating without conversation is only stoking.

Mothers, food, love, and career, the four major guilt groups.

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.

The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.

It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.

Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

The only thing that lasts longer than a friend's love is the stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better.

I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.

The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

Each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking, of less able minds--and then confidently embarks on making fresh errors of its own.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

To be a saint does not exclude fine dresses nor a beautiful house.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.

One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.

No matter how much spin, effort, lunch or dinner you give the media, they will not fail to notice whether you have won or lost.

The sin which makes you sad and repentant is more liked by Allah than the good deed which turns you arrogant.

If what I do prove well, it won't advance.They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.

Until you walk a mile in another man's moccasins you can't imagine the smell.

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time. It is harder to stay where you are than to get out.

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

You don't die of a broken heart, you only wish you did.

Family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied by psychosomatic jitters.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere possibility of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may expect the most efficient service.

Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.

Gifts allow us to demonstrate exactly how little we know about a person. And nothing pisses a person off more than being shoved into the wrong pigeonhole.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Nothing is said that has not been said before.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

I prefer complexity to certainty, cheerful mysteries to sullen facts.

Death … It’s the only thing we haven’t succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.

...as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings...

When we conquer without danger our triumph is without glory.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. ... For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

It's always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don't.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

To believe with certainty we must begin by doubting.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

I was raised almost entirely on turnips and potatoes, but I think that the turnips had more to do with the effect than the potatoes.

The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general natural law

If you can read this, thank a teacher.

Let us have a care not to disclose our hearts to those who shut up theirs against us.

Men generally believe what they wish.

A heart is a fragile thing, that's why we protect them so vigorously, give them away so rarely, and why it means so much when we do. Some hearts are more fragile then others, purer somehow. Like crystal in a world of glass. Even the way they shatter is beautiful.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused – preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.

In this business you either sink or swim or you don't.

We simply rob ourselves when we make presents to the dead.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

When the grandmothers of today hear the word ``Chippendales,'' they don't necessary think of chairs.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.When ignorance from out of our lives can banishPhilology, 'tis folly to know Spanish.Juan Smith

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

I do not believe the Union will disolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other.

Call home at least once a week. It's a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that's wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.

We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.

You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting.

I don't mind being miserable as long as I'm painting well.

Love is not a crime, denying it is. Having dreams is not a crime, not chasing them is. Making mistakes is not a crime, not learning from them is. Life is not a crime, not living it is.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.

Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this counrty is closely related with this.

For he who sees a need but waits to be asked is already set on cruel refusal.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

In summer, the song sings itself.

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

"Human reason is by nature architectonic."

Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three- piece suit. Max Lucado

We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity.

Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arriving.

Beware the fury of a patient man.

I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

I didn't know how babies were made until I was pregnant with my fourth child.

Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be.

Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.

I married a German. Every night I dress up as Poland and he invades me.

We are drawn to our television sets each April the way we are drawn to the scene of an accident.

The world is so full of a number of thingsI'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Wit is educated insolence.

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.

It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

All the sounds of the earth are like music.

It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.

If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.

Es tan corto el amor, y tan largo el olvido.(Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.)

Do not employ handsome servants.

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being happy except that they are so.

Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.

Have not all races had their first unity from a mythology that marries them to rock and hill?

It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

I stopped believing in Santa Claus at age six when my mother took me to see him in a store and he asked for my autograph.

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

I can endure my own despair but not another's hope.

This is the short and the long of it.

I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.

The beginning is always today.

Why, then the world's mine oyster,Which I with sword will open.

She is a friend of my mind... The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

A friend is a second self.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

I don't like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions.

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you. I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens.

My favorite animal is steak.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

ABRUPT, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon- shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."

ABSOLUTE, adj. Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys.

Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.

We have two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk the less.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

I've always been crazy, but it's kept me from going insane.

Never be ashamed! There's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth bothering with.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.

What we’re saying today is that you're either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.

Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.

Drop out of school before your mind rots from our mediocre educational system.

It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.

Technology: No Place for Wimps!

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

Love is not just an ecstasy, not just an intense feeling. It is a driving force. It is something that carries us through our life of joyful duty.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

The key to immortality is first to live a life worth remembering.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

Love is the reason for it all.

The world to a blind man is his touch. The world to a stupid man is his mouth. The world to a great man is his vision.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.

Emotions have taught mankind to reason.

A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

It's not practice that makes perfect....but perfect practice that makes perfect.

ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.They took away his vote and gave insteadThe right, when he had earned, to _eat_ his bread.In vain -- he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,To come again and part him from his roll.Offenbach Stutz

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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.

No poet sings because he must sing. At least no great poet does. A great poet sings because he chooses to sing

No matter what we have come through, or how many perils we have safely passed, or how many imperfect and jagged - in some places perhaps irreparably - our life has been, we cannot in our heart of hearts imagine how it could have been different. As we look back on it, it slips in behind us in orderly array, and, with all its mistakes, acquires a sort of eternal fitness, and even, at times, of poetic glamour.

I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.

Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.

I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

A successful lie is doubly a lie; an error which has to be corrected is a heavier burden than the truth.

Imperfection is inherited, therefore we all sin, but fighting the war of sin is the greatest war of all because we all die in the end no matter how hard we fight.

I tasted too what was called the sweet of revenge - but it was transient, it expired even with the object, that provoked it.

RECONSIDER, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.

One man has enthusiasm for 30 minutes, another for 30 days, but it is the man who has it for 30 years who makes a success of his life.

Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!

My soldiers ask of me, why surrender a military advantage in the field ... I could not answer.

I think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha rests quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer of the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our own particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Read much, but not many books.

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.

WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

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.

ACEPHALOUS, adj. In the surprising condition of the Crusader who absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related by de Joinville.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Done to a turn on the iron, beholdHim who to be famous aspired.Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,And his twistings are greatly admired.Hassan Brubuddy

Fear less, hope more;Whine less, breathe more;Talk less, say more;Hate less, love more;And all good things are yours.

There it was, hidden in alphabetical order.

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.

I'm kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heroes are artists and writers.

In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.

And so faith is closing your eyes and following the breath of your soul down to the bottom of life, where existence and nonexistence have merged into irrelevance. All that matters is the little part you play in the vast drama.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.

A jest's prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it.

Wind buffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.

My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight.

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.

I have thought too much to stoop to action.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Men who never get carried away should be.

It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.

When you're part of a team, you stand up for your teammates. Your loyalty is to them. You protect them through good and bad, because they'd do the same for you.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.

Orthodox medicine has not found an answer to your complaint. However, luckily for you, I happen to be a quack.

Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

Every silver lining has a touch of grey.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

All we actually have is our body and its muscles that allow us to be under our own power.

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.

ADORE, v.t. To venerate expectantly.

Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling in them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.

Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and will become as he should be.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

When truth is nothing but the truth, its unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

There is a noble manner of being poor and who does not know it will never be rich.

I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it.

Brothers? Oh, I hate brothers. My older brother just doesn't know when to die, and my younger brothers seem to do nothing but.

If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.

Walk through life eager and open to self-improvement and that which is going to best help you evolve, because that's really why were here: to evolve as human beings.

True repentance means making amends with the person when at all possible.

The fields were fruitful and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic.

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I once said Gazza's IQ was less than his shirt number and he asked me: "What's an IQ?"

The mirror never sees itself. The reflection never is itself.

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en;In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

Marriage isn't for life any more -- life is too long. Marriage is for love. Love gladly accepts responsibility. Love wants commitment. Marriage should be celebrated as the optimistic and glorious thing that it is. We can't call it a failure if it doesn't last forever.

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.

True poverty does not come from God.

You get fifteen democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions.

Love as Thought is Truth.Love as Action is Right Conduct.Love as Understanding is Peace.Love as Feeling is Non-violence.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

True is it that we have seen better days.

I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say, 'Shut up.'

He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.

Trying is the first step towards failure.

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.

The silent bear no witness against themselves.

ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden. (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)He zedjagged so uncomen wydeThet non coude pas on eyder syde;So, to com saufly thruh, I beenConstreynet for to doodge betwene.Munwele

Help others get ahead. You will always stand taller with someone else on your shoulders.

Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,Or close the wall up with our English dead!In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility;But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger:Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

Duty without love is deplorable.Duty with love is desirable.Love without duty is Divine.

As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience.

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

Talent does what it can, Genius does what it must.

What we play is life.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.

He is able who thinks he is able.

If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy.

Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.

ALLEGIANCE, n.This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointedTo smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed. G.J.

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

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.

Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.

It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.

As a kid, I knew I wanted to be either a cartoonist or an astronaut. The latter was never much of a possibility, as I don't even like riding in elevators.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.

All good things are wild, and free.

There are times when God asks nothing of his children except silence, patience and tears.

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.

Et tu, Brute!

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

Troubles are often the tools God fashions us for better things.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.

I think the mark of a great ruler, is not his ability to make war but to achieve peace.

We have seen better days.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Never argue with a fool. Someone watching may not be able to tell the difference.

Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances.

Your life can't go according to plan if you have no plan.

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.

He is richest who is content with the least.

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.

Culture makes all men gentle.

If your children look up to you, you've made a success of life's biggest job.

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

A person who trusts no one can't be trusted.

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

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.

The idea is there, locked inside, and all you have to do is remove the excess stone.

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

The pleasures which we most rarely experience give us the greatest delight.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don't repeat it.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

There is one way to handle the ignorant and malicious critic. Ignore him.

We are prisoners of ideas.

As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves.

Conscience and reputation are two things. Conscience is due to yourself, reputation to your neighbour.

Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.

Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue.

I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we're not wise enough to see it.

Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to pecuniary [monetary] matters. Want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgement of others.

Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

In my wide association in life, meeting with many and great men in various parts of the world, I have yet to find the man, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

Sin bravely...We will never have all the facts to make a perfect judgement, but with the aid of basic experience we must leap bravely into the future.

I like this place, and willingly would waste my time in it.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Insignificant events can take on monumental proportions when your head is full of practically nothing.

Being natural is simply a pose.

The less their ability, the more their conceit.

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is god, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but never less, dazzaling, passionate, and eternal form.

Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.

Our lives teach us who we are.

Nothing in life is static; it either gets better, or it gets worse.

The world wants to be cheated. So cheat.

The term "learning disability" has appeal because it implies a specific neurological condition for which no one can be held particularly responsible, and yet it escapes the stigma of mental retardation. There is no implication of neglect, emotional disturbance, or improper training or education, nor does it imply a lack of motivation on the part of the child. For these cosmetic reasons, it is a rather nice term to have around.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

Abundance is, in large part, an attitude.

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.

It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see.

Being convinced one knows the whole story is the surest way to fail.

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.

Even the wisest counsel is useless when it is unheeded.

What you keep by you, you may change and mend but words, once spoken, can never be recalled.

Fish and visitors smell in three days.

Habits are cobwebs at first; cables at last.

The true law of the race is progress and development. Whatever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.

Judge of thine improvement, not by what thou speakest or writest, but by the firmness of thy mind, and the government of thy passions and affections.

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.

The average person living to age 70 has 613,000 hours of life. This is too long a period not to have fun.

Go to other people's funerals or they won't come to yours.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don`t appreciate the moment until it's passed.

There are days when any electrical appliance in the house, including the vacuum cleaner, offers more entertainment than the TV set.

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowlege: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.

GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,For dictionary makers are generally gents.G.J.

MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the same way of thinking.

PORTABLE, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of possession.His light estate, if neither he did make itNor yet its former guardian forsake it,Is portable improperly, I take it.Worgum Slupsky

MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.Material things I know, or fell, or see;All else is immaterial to me.Jamrach Holobom

MINE, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

MINOR, adj. Less objectionable.

MINSTREL, adj. Formerly a poet, singer or musician; now a nigger with a color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood can bear.

PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail; in New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.

SYMBOLIC, adj. Pertaining to symbols and the use and interpretation of symbols.They say 'tis conscience feels compunction;I hold that that's the stomach's function,For of the sinner I have notedThat when he's sinned he's somewhat bloated,Or ill some other ghastly fashionWithin that bowel of compassion.True, I believe the only sinnerIs he that eats a shabby dinner.You know how Adam with good reason,For eating apples out of season,Was "cursed." But that is all symbolic: The truth is, Adam had the colic.G.J.

MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable, for literary babes who never tire of testifying their delight in the vapid compound by appropriate googoogling. The words are commonly Saxon -- that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.The man who writes in SaxonIs the man to use an ax onJudibras

MORAL, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.It is sayd there be a raunge of mountaynes in the Easte, on one syde of the which certayn conducts are immorall, yet on the other syde they are holden in good esteeme; wherebye the mountayneer is much conveenyenced, for it is given to him to goe downe eyther way and act as it shall suite his moode, withouten offence._Gooke's Meditations_

RASH, adj. Insensible to the value of our advice."Now lay your bet with mine, nor letThese gamblers take your cash.""Nay, this child makes no bet." "Great snakes!How can you be so rash?"Bootle P. Gish

RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

How can a question be answered that asks a lifetime of questions?

The least of learning is done in the classrooms.

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

The less a man makes declarative statements the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

To fly we have to have resistance.

Oregano is the spice of life.

ABSENT, adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.To men a man is but a mind. Who caresWhat face he carries or what form he wears?But woman's body is the woman. O,Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,But heed the warning words the sage hath said:A woman absent is a woman dead.Jogo Tyree

DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of the Trojan war could have raised with ease. Homer never tires of sneering at "men who live in these degenerate days," which is perhaps why they suffered him to beg his bread -- a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.

INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both -- as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man. Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only incompatibility let loose. Instead of such low language as "Go heel yourself -- I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are incompossible," would convey and equally significant intimation and in stately courtesy are altogether superior.

EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, _A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting," as Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures_. His book was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit of the soul.

OFFENSIVE, adj. Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the advance of an army against its enemy. "Were the enemy's tactics offensive?" the king asked. "I should say so!" replied the unsuccessful general. "The blackguard wouldn't come out of his works!"

OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an _old man_. Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an _old_ book."Old books? The devil take them!" Goby said."Fresh every day must be my books and bread."Nature herself approves the Goby ruleAnd gives us every moment a fresh fool.Harley Shum

RESPLENDENT, adj. Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an elemental unit of a parade.The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet-and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them."Chronicles of the Classes"

PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution -- they knew no more of the matter than he.

CARNIVOROUS, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain."Close-fisted Scotchman!" Johnson criedTo thrifty J. Macpherson;"See me -- I'm ready to divideWith any worthy person."Sad Jamie: "That is very true --The boast requires no backing;And all are worthy, sir, to you,Who have what you are lacking."Anita M. Bobe

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

I visualize things in my mind before I have to do them. It is like having a mental workshop.

Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.

Folks who never do any more than they are paid for, never get paid more than they do.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

Behind every successful man there are usually a lot of unsuccessful years.

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.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

As a twig is bent the tree inclines.

Good habits are formed; bad habits we fall into.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.

It is not a lucky word, this name "impossible"; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution

DANCE, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

You cannot keep a man down without staying down with him.

Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others.

What did my hands do before they held you?

A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

It is said that if Noah's ark had had to be built by a company; they would not have laid the keel yet; and it may be so. What is many men's business is nobody's business. The greatest things are accomplished by individual men.

No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

To err is dysfunctional, to forgive co-dependent.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

Great artists have no country.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.

The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.

Perpetual worry will get you to one place ahead of time - the cemetery.

A smiling face is half the meal.

God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.

One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life.

We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.

I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

DANGER, n.A savage beast which, when it sleeps,Man girds at and despises,But takes himself away by leapsAnd bounds when it arises.Ambat Delaso

What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness."

Be warned against all 'good' advice because 'good' advice is necessarily 'safe' advice, and though it will undoubtedly follow a sane pattern, it will very likely lead one into total sterility--one of the crushing problems of our time.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.

DEFENCELESS, adj. Unable to attack.

DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.

If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.

People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self.

Self-reverence, self knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

What force is more potent than love?

I have loved like a child collecting shells along the shore line, discarding one shell for another of seemingly more outward beauty with no knowledge of the pearls that were hidden within.

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.

Some have half-baked ideas because their ideals are not heated up enough.

Safeguard the health both of body and soul.

Possession is eleven points in the law.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.

Before a man can wake up and find himself famous he has to wake up and find himself.

Life isn't simple. But the beauty of it is, you can always start over. It'll get easier.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story.

All television is children's television.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try.

Grow old along with me the best is yet to be.

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes!

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Strain every nerve to gain your point.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

Old houses mended,Cost little less than new before they ’re ended.

When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.

Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behavior, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability.

The peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings.

Malice sucks up the greater part of her own venom, and poisons herself.

Most people rust out due to lack of challenge. Few people rust out due to overuse.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

God is really only another artist, he made the elephant, giraffe and cat. He has no real style but keeps trying new ideas.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

It has been my fate, and one's fate one accepts. It's a dreadful thing to have to say, in so wicked a world.

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction. The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, the responsibility lies with you.

Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

Men are not so weak as you think. They can always leave anybody or any place without a pang - if they find another person or another place they like better. If they feel pricks and scruples it is merely because they cannot make up their mind that the change will be absolutely to their advantage.

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.

No more important duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.

DISABUSE, v.t. The present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.

Thank goodness you're a failure-- it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about you--look at the successes. Would you BE one, on your honour?

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Free advice is worth the price.

Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half- way to meet it.

Life is like one big Mardi Gras. But instead of showing your boobs, show people your brain, and if they like what they'll, you'll have more beads than you know what to do with.

Men are confused. They're conflicted. They want a woman who's their intellectual equal, but they're afraid of women like that. They want a woman they can dominate, but then they hate her for being weak. It's an ambivalence that goes back to a man's relationship with his mother. Source of his life, center of his universe, object of both his fear and his love.

Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.

Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and fast allies.

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.

Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.

The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.

Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus.

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity.

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

Be not simply good - be good for something.

Silence is a text easy to misread.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

A man's character is his guardian divinity.

In the long run, we are all dead.

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.

For aught that I could ever read,Could ever hear by tale or history,The course of true love never did run smooth.

Go after a man's weakness, and never, ever, threaten unless you're going to follow through, because if you don't, the next time you won't be taken seriously.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?

Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's not any gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?

'I think therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only he himself can damage that. His reputations what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

To see a man fearless in dangers. untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man's notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and nowise dependent on, their consequences -- then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.

EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

Bullwinkle: You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit.General: What does that make you?Bullwinkle: What else? An executive...

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

So live that your memories will be part of your happiness.

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

If you don't like your own character there may be a new one ready-made and waiting for you. The snake sheds its skin with impunity, relying on the same nature which you rely on.

We are who people think we are.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of life.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, control youth, and delights old age.

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror.

To harken to evil conversation is the road to wickedness.. (Pravis Assuescere Sermonibus Est Via Ad Rem Ipsam)

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

My home is not a place, it is people.

IMMORTALITY, n.A toy which people cry for,And on their knees apply for,Dispute, contend and lie for,And if allowedWould be right proudEternally to die for.G.J.

The test of any man's character is how he takes praise.

Some people make headlines while others make history.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

As a teen, you're constantly trying to figure out who you are... But it's okay not to know right now. Your whole life you're going to be growing and changing.

I don't sleep with happily married men.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one's mind when occasion demands it.

Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

A man always has two reasons for what he does-a good one and the real one.

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.

A well cultivated mind is made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only the one single mind educated by all previous time.

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

A stale mind is the devil's breadbox.

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it thousands of times.

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.

IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

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.

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The eagle has landed.

Her only flair is in her nostrils.

The best way out is always through.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

The fog comeson little cat feet.It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

The National Rifle Association says, 'Guns don't kill people. People do'. But I think the gun helps.

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.

Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.

In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.

The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others.

I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more.

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: "It seemed a good idea at the time."

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process.

I'm just trying to look at something without blinking.

It is not growing like a treein bulk doth make man better be;Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere,A lily of a dayis fairer in MayAlthough it fall and die that night,It was the plant of flower and light,In small proportions we just beauties see;And in short measures, life may perfect be.

ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.Enough is as good as a feast -- for that matterEnougher's as good as a feast for the platter.Arbely C. Strunk

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

One ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in advanced age, and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, -- _exoteric_, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and _esoteric_, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

It is the simple things in life that make living worthwhile - sweet fundamental things such as love.

It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.

In all our efforts to provide "advantages" we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured, and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Friendships that have stood the test of time and change are surely best.

The will to do, the soul to dare.

Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

Wear a smile and have friends,wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it's good enough for the children of Texas.

Get up, stand upStand up for your rightsGet up, stand upDon't give up the fight.

We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.

The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people.

Having something to say is overrated.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say 'I don't know'.

Experience shows that success is due less to ability that to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.

If you want to say it with flowers, a single rose says : "I'm cheap!"

And yesterday he would have killed me to get to his foe. But now we serve each other. Only a fool walks into the future backward.

Jews can't serve on juries because they insist they're guilty.

Hell is other people.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

A hundred years for now? All new people.

The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Women who buy perfume and flowers for themselves because their men won't do it are called ``self basting.''

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

Health is not simply the absence of sickness.

I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.

I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

INSECTIVORA, n."See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers,"How Providence provides for all His creatures!""His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows:For us He has provided wrens and swallows."Sempen Railey

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

For the worst sign of all--as I must have it for you-- is that you can't help me. That's when a woman pities.

There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

OK, so you've got a Ph.D. Now, don't touch anything.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.

Fortunately, psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist.

Act as if were impossible to fail.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.

In an argument, you have to learn to control your emotions. The other person is the revolver, but you are the trigger. The revolver won't hurt you as long as the trigger isn't pulled.

When I am asked, "What do you think of our audience?" I answer, "I know two kinds of audiences only--one coughing, and one not coughing."

OPPOSE, v. To assist with obstructions and objections.How lonely he who thinks to vexWith bandinage the Solemn Sex!Of levity, Mere Man, beware;None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.Percy P. Orminder

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Why can't peace be a single overriding common purpose: why do we wait for a crisis to pull us together? Let's pull together for peace.

With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.

I tried to commit suicide by sticking my head in the oven, but there was a cake in it.

But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents.

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted,If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returningBack to their springs, like the rain shall fill them full of refreshment;That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

It's only when you abandon your ambitions that they become possible.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.

Really listening and suspending one's own judgment is necessary in order to understand other people on their own terms... This is a process that requires trust and builds trust.

OLYMPIAN, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.His name the smirking tourist scrawlsUpon Minerva's temple walls,Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,And marks his appetite's abuse.Averil Joop

JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.

The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.

Photographers do this for a living, every single day -- they point their lenses toward every single corner of our world and somehow make the mundane mesmerizing through their artistic eye. It's all a matter of being aware of your surroundings and realizing that there are some really amazing and interesting things to look at, even if it may just be something so simple as a wall being covered up by paint.

I don't have false teeth. Do you think I'd buy teeth like these?

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

2. He who is greedy is disgraced; he who discloses his hardship will always be humiliated; he who has no control over his tongue will often have to face discomfort.

If your head is wax, don't walk in the sun.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five- year-old men more.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Discretion is being able to raise your eyebrow instead of your voice.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.

He who neglects to drink from the spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

A great preservative against angry and mutinous thoughts, and all impatience and quarreling, is to have some great business and interest in your mind, which, like a sponge shall suck up your attention and keep you from brooding over what displeases you.

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

Truth is something you stumble into when you think you're going someplace else.

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

Because the women are watching.

If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

Experience becomes possible because of language.

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

ONCE, adv. Enough.

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life.

The only aspect of our travels that is interesting to others is disaster.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war--and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair.

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

If the shoe fits, it's too expensive.

Even when a thing's already nice there mostly is some other thing that would have been nicer - or as to which we wonder if it wouldn't.

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.

KEEP, v.t.He willed away his whole estate,And then in death he fell asleep,Murmuring: "Well, at any rate,My name unblemished I shall keep."But when upon the tomb 'twas wroughtWhose was it? -- for the dead keep naught.Durang Gophel Arn

Murphy's Law: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."

We are each responsible for our own life - no other person is or even can be.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

This Englishwoman is so refinedShe has no bosom and no behind.

She had fortunately always her appetite for news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault.

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

There is but one temple in the universe and that is the body of man.

You've got to be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for?

Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

The body says what words cannot.

It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

I don't have an English accent because this is what English sounds like when spoken properly.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Life is like a ten-speed bike; most of us have gears we never use.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new.

REDUNDANT, adj. Superfluous; needless; _de trop_.The Sultan said: "There's evidence abundantTo prove this unbelieving dog redundant."To whom the Grand Vizier, with mien impressive,Replied: "His head, at least, appears excessive."Habeeb SuleimanMr. Debs is a redundant citizen.Theodore Roosevelt

If at first you don't succeed, why go on and make a fool of yourself?

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that they just about throw up.

All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

OTHERWISE, adv. No better.

Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.

"Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

Pain (any pain--emotional, physical, mental) has a message. The information it has about our life can be remarkably specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: "We would be more alive if we did more of this," and, "Life would be more lovely if we did less of that." Once we get the pain's message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away.

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!

Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.

OVEREAT, v. To dine.Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess,Well skilled to overeat without distress!Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,Shows Man's superiority to Beast.John Boop

Let a good man do good deeds with the same zeal that the evil man does bad ones.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.

There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.

She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other.

The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.

Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage.

One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.

The sins of the fathers are often visited upon the sons-in-law.

Without any inhibitions of any kind I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.

LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the aspect of a national crime.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror.It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing.It receives but does not keep.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.

The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretense but an idea.

Have no fear of perfection -- you will never reach it.

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober.

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts when he has forgotten his aim.

When Hitler came for the Jews... I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church — and there was nobody left to be concerned.

Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.

Remember! Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights - then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

Imagine a world without Darwin. Imagine a world in which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had not transformed our understanding of living things. What... would become baffling and puzzling..., in urgent need of explanation? The answer is: practically everything about living things....

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

His voice was a intimate as the rustle of sheets.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Mankind's worst enemy is fear of work.

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.

Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.

All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

As long as you can savor the humorous aspect of misery and misfortune, you can overcome anything.

I hate quotations.

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.

The young man who has not wept is a savage,and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

A full cup must be carried steadily.

Never trust a husband too far or a bachelor too near.

We are so vain that we even care for the opinions of those we don't care for.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.

There is no such thing as "fun for the whole family."

Now faith is the substance of things hoped' for, the evidence of things not seen.

By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.

The more you sweat during peace, The less you bleed during war.

We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.

Egotism -- usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.

From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents.From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks.From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality.From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.

I like weights. You know where you stand with them. Well, sometimes you're lying under them, trying not to let them crush you, but you see, you KNOW they'd crush you if they could. There's honesty.

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

LAW, n.Once Law was sitting on the bench,And Mercy knelt a-weeping."Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!Nor come before me creeping.Upon your knees if you appear,'Tis plain your have no standing here."Then Justice came. His Honor cried:"_Your_ status? -- devil seize you!""_Amica curiae,_" she replied --"Friend of the court, so please you.""Begone!" he shouted -- "there's the door --I never saw your face before!"G.J.

REPOSE, v.i. To cease from troubling.

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

Why you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, and th most audacious soldier, put them at a table together-and what do you get? The sum of their fears.

Life is short; live it up.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.

Times of general calamity and confusion create great minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.

I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.