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Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring -- it was peace.
Milan Kundera
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
Unknown
Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies.
Gene Hill
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
Imbesi's Law of Conservation of Filth
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
John Cleese, comic actor (1939- )
Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.
Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
As regards intellectual work, it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realms of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual working in solitude.
Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)
It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.
Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)
If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)
If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their fruits.
Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204)
I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
Marshall McLuhan, cultural historian and communications theorist (1911-1980)
The tears of strangers are only water.
Russian proverb
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778)
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
Lord Salisbury, British prime minister(1830-1903)
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
Henry Winkler, actor (1945-)
He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.
Confucius (c. 551-479? BC)
Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
Miguel de Cervantes, writer (1547-1616)
A closed mind is like a closed book: just a block of wood.
Chinese Proverb
When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.
Rita Rudner, comedienne (1955- )
Happy the people whose annals are blank in the history books!
Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755)
Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.
Chuang-Tzu, philosopher (4th c. BCE)
I am not one of those who believe that a great army is the means of maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession.
Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president, Nobel laureate (1856-1924)
People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman, playwright (1905-1984)
The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.
James Madison, 4th US president (1751-1836)
Flattery won't hurt you if you don't swallow it.
Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
Elizabeth Bowen, novelist (1899-1973)
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
Joan Baez, musician (1941- )
Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt.
Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)
No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)
The road to wisdom? Well it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again, but less and less and less.
Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)
What you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)
Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Johannes Kepler, astronomer (1571-1630)
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962)
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all hey have now, and all they expect to have.
Edward Everett Hale, clergyman and author (1822-1909)
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, educator (1899-1977)
Any fine morning, a power saw can fell a tree that took a thousand years to grow.
Edwin Way Teale, naturalist and author (1899-1980)
A scholar knows no boredom.
Jean Paul Richter, writer (1763-1825)
Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist (1930- )
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.
John Keats, poet (1795-1821)
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: Humility is endless.
T.S Eliot, poet (1888-1965)
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)
Life is mostly froth and bubble, / Two things stand like stone, / Kindness in another's trouble, / Courage in your own.
Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet (1833-1870)
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives the rose.
Chinese proverb
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
Elsa Schiaparelli, fashion designer (1890-1973)
There's no sauce in the world like hunger.
Miguel de Cervantes, novelist (1547-1616)
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.
William Ellery Channing, clergyman and writer (1780-1842)
By trying to make things easier for their children parents can make things much harder for them.
Mardy Grothe, psychologist and author (1942- )
A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engrafted with a foreign stock.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
W.C. Fields, comedian (1880-1946)
In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
Socrates, philosopher (469?-399 BCE)
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
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.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher and writer (c. 3 BCE - AD 65)
Swords and guns have no eyes.
Chinese proverb
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher (1772-1834)
Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
David Dunham
A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned one will take only twice as long.
Brasington's Ninth Law
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb
Although gold dust is precious, when it gets in your eyes, it obstructs your vision.
Hsi-Tang
One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
John W. Foster, clergyman (1770-1843)
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James, psychologist (1842-1910)
When people tell you how young you look, they are also telling you how old you are.
Cary Grant, actor (1904-1986)
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680)
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
Charles Evans Hughes, jurist (1862-1948)
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.
Vincent van Gogh, painter (1853-1890)
The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)
With enough 'ifs' we could put Paris in a bottle.
French saying
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
Moliere, actor and playwright (1622-1673)
If the rich could hire someone else to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living.
Jewish Proverb
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945)
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire, educator (1921-1997)
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov, actor, writer and director (1921- )
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
Spanish proverb
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
Ludwig Van Beethoven, composer (1770-1827)
Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, literary critic (1804-1869)
You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
Without darkness there are no dreams.
Karla Kuban, novelist
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
Beware the fury of the patient man.
John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700)
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value to its scarcity.
Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680)
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arnold Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)
The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reach us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiation of their personalities.
Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)
The only gift is giving to the poor; / All else is exchange.
Thiruvalluvar, poet (c. 30 BCE)
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680)
You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange.
A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993)
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)
Just as appetite comes by eating so work brings inspiration.
Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)
A calamity that affects everyone is only half a calamity.
Italian proverb
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956)
No two persons ever read the same book.
Edmund Wilson, critic (1895-1972)
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is color-blind.
Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )
Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)
The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.
Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
Reading is seeing by proxy.
Herbert Spencer, philosopher (1820-1903)
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion.
Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)
If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how many who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity.
Italian proverb
We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
Maya Angelou, poet (1928- )
In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974)
A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places.
Paul Gardner, painter
The great high of winning Wimbledon lasts for about a week. You go down in the record book, but you don't have anything tangible to hold on to. But having a baby -- there isn't any comparison.
Chris Evert Lloyd, tennis player (1954- )
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
If you don't execute your ideas, they die.
Roger von Oech, author and consultant
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher (1813-1855)
Intellectuals solve problems: geniuses prevent them.
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a persons standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. . . . . The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
Justice O'Connor for Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (March 5, 1984) at 687-88
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
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 a light within.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926- )
I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
Arthur Godfrey
He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes.
Chinese Proverb
I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)
How much easier it is to be generous than just! Men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest.
Junius, pseudonym of the unknown author of a series of letters published in a London newspaper during (1769-1772)
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.
Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908- )
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant, historian (1885-1981)
We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
Michel Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde, playwright
When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Confucius (551-479 BC)
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Mignon McLaughlin, author
He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher (1772-1834)
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.
Margaret Mitchell, novelist (1900-1949)
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
Anne Bradstreet, poet (1612-1672)
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.
Arnold Bennett, novelist (1867-1931)
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.
Maya Angelou, poet (1928- )
All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.
Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (1903-1998)
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
Charity sees the need not the cause.
German proverb
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
Japanese proverb
What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-1880)
A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Sarah Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
Navajo Proverb
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president (1809-1865)
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1819-1892)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk.
Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990)
Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
Rita Mae Brown, author (1944- )
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
English Proverb
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)
Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same.
Heraclitus, philosopher (Ca. 540-470 BCE)
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
Kings stand more in need of the company of the intelligent than the intelligent do of the society of kings.
Saadi, poet (1184-1291) [Gulistan]
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)
Oftentimes excusing of a fault / Doth make the fault the worse by th' excuse.
William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)
Talking is like playing the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 B.C)
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.
George Bernard, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.
Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 B.C.)
It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)
There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.
Buddha
He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.
Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
There is a pleasure sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know.
John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700)
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Edgar Allan Poe, poet and short-story writer (1809-1849)
Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake.
Joan Gilbert (1931- )
As against having beautiful workshops, studios, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
Van Wyck Brooks, writer, critic (1886-1963)
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, Nobel laureate, (1904-1991)
Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape.
Solon, statesman (c. 638-c558 BCE)
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and dramatist (1802-1885)
If the camel once gets his nose in a tent, his body will soon follow.
Arabian proverb
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs--jolted by every pebble in the road.
Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Sometimes to remain silent is to lie.
Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.
Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980)
We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.
Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)
A handful of sand is an anthology of the universe.
David McCord, poet (1897-1997)
What is called discretion in men is called cunning in animals.
Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (1621-1695)
The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)
Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation.
John Cage, composer (1912-1992)
I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
Nikola Tesla, electrical engineer and inventor (1856-1943)
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Cato the Elder, statesman, soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE)
In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)
Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.
Charles Simic
If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
Theophile Gautier, writer (1811-1872)
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.
Gloria Steinem, women's rights activist, editor (1934- )
Sin is geographical.
Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.
Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)
Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and writer (1803-1882)
Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie, writer (1860-1937)
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180)
The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, Nobel laureate (1904-1991)
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)
You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.
Bonnie Prudden, fitness trainer and author (1914- )
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Jean Cocteau, author and painter (1889-1963)
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Booker T. Washington, reformer, educator, and author (1856-1915)
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
African proverb
To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
Karl Viktor von Bonstetten, author (1745-1832)
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than, 'try to be a little kinder'.
Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)
Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.
Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)
We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?
Edward Young, poet (1683-1765)
He whom the gods love, dies young.
Titus Maccius Plautus, dramatist (circa 254-184 BCE)
Language is not neutral. It is not merely a vehicle which carries ideas. It is itself a shaper of ideas.
Dale Spender, writer (1943- )
Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of the billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things within that enormous immensity.
Wernher von Braun, rocket engineer (1912-1977)
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.
Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (1928- )
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.
Robert Service, writer (1874-1958)
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)
Bed is the poor man's opera.
Italian proverb
With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
Chinese proverb
When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?
Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
Richard Steele, author and editor (1672-1729)
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.
Charles Dudley Warner, editor, and publisher (1829-1900)
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security.
Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan Francis Behan, playwright (1923-1964)
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616)
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz, author (1894-1985)
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller, novelist (1891-1980)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
To understand your parents' love, bear your own children.
Chinese saying
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.
Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
James Matthew Barrie, author (1860-1937)
Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.
Rita Mae Brown, writer (1944- )
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)
A full cup must be carried steadily.
English proverb
Never confuse motion with action.
Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)
Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need.
Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990)
Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.
Margaret Chittenden, writer
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg, poet (1878-1967)
Luck never gives; it only lends.
Swedish proverb
The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (1748-1832)
The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry.
John Jensen
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
One kind word can warm three winter months.
Japanese proverb
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
What a man says drunk he has thought sober.
Flemish proverb
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- )
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.
Irish proverb
Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915)
In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain.
Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.
Louis-Hector Berlioz, composer (1803-1869)
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
Sean O'Casey, playwright (1880-1964)
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.
Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919)
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
Albert Camus, writer and philosopher (1913-1960)
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931)
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never kno
