Human-Landscaping - Quotes


This is one of my collections of quotations, compiled by me over the years.


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

-- Abigail Adams

Don't panic.

-- Douglas Adams, 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe'

Life is wasted on the living.

-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

-- Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

-- Douglas Adams

No one means all he says, yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

-- Henry Adams

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

-- Henry Adams

Friends are born, not made.

-- Henry Adams

Words are slippery.

-- Henry Adams

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of facts.

-- Henry Brooks Adams

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

-- Scott Adams

When I think of all the people I respect the most, you're right there, serving them drinks.

-- Scott Adams

The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

-- Scott Adams

History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.

-- Konrad Adenauer

A thick skin is a gift from God.

-- Konrad Adenauer

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.

-- Aesop

Kindness effects more than severity.

-- Aesop

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

-- Howard Hathaway Aiken, physicist and computer pioneer

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

-- Catherine Aird

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.

-- Akhenaton

It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

-- Alex, A Clockwork Orange

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

-- Muhammad Ali

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

-- Muhammad Ali

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

-- Muhammad Ali

We must help women in every society to have their voices heard.

-- Madeline Albright

He was so narrow minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes.

-- Fred Allen

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

-- Woody Allen

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.

-- Woody Allen

Where is the yesterday that worried us so?

-- Joan Walsh Anglund

If you find a good solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem.

-- Robert Anthony

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

-- Guillaume Apollinair

Stories are signposts to help the world choose between the darkness and the light.

-- Arago, "The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne"

But we are all that way: when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it.

-- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

-- Aristotle

Education is the best provision for old age.

-- Aristotle

Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not easy.

-- Aristotle

Law means good order.

-- Aristotle

It's all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it now and then.

-- Richard Willard Armour (American Poet)

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no hose sing a song.

-- Louis Armstrong

Flowers are my music.

-- Dr. Thomas Arnold

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

-- Isaac Asimov

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

-- W. H. Auden

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

-- W. H.Auden

A culture is no better than its woods.

-- W.H. Auden

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

-- Red Auerbach

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

-- Jane Austen

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

-- Marcus Aurelius

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

-- Marcus Aurelius

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

-- Marcus Aurelius

Whoever values peace of mind and the health of the soul will live the best of all possible lives.

-- Marcus Aurelius

The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.

-- Bernard Avishai

Greater than the death of flesh, is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril, we can never surrender. The future is all around us. Waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.

-- Babylon 5

All around us, it is as if the universe is holding its breath. Waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition, or moments of revelations. This has the feeling of both. There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war that we fight is not against powers and principalities. It is against chaos and despair.

-- Babylon 5

Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.

-- Roger Babson

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

-- Richard Bach

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.

-- Richard Bach

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

-- Richard Bachman

If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

-- Francis Bacon

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

-- Francis Bacon

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

-- Francis Bacon

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

-- Francis Bacon

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

-- Francis Bacon

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

-- Francis Bacon

Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.

-- Roger Babson

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

-- James A. Baldwin

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

-- James Baldwin

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

-- Tallulah Bankhead

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows.

-- Janette Barber

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

-- James M. Barrie

Always be a little kinder than necessary.

-- James M. Barrie

Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.

-- Dave Barry

The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

-- Dave Barry

The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

-- Dave Barry

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

-- Dave Barry

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

-- Dave Barry

Never lick a steak knife.

-- Dave Barry

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

-- Dave Barry

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the United States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the 9 millimeter bullet.

-- Dave Barry

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

-- Dave Barry

You should not confuse your career with your life.

-- Dave Barry

No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

-- Dave Barry

Your friends love you anyway.

-- Dave Barry

Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures.

-- Maria Konstantinova Bashkirtseff

Music fathoms the sky.

-- Charles Baudelaire

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

-- Simone de Beauvior

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

-- Simone de Beauvoir

The skill of man is unequal to the formation of a new man from old materials, but the battered tenement may, with care, be long sustained by props.

-- Becklard’s Physiology

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Faith is spiritualized imagination.

-- Henry Ward Beecher, Presbyterian minister (1813-1887)

The Socratic manner is not a game that two can play.

-- Max Beerbohm

I don't like authority, at least I don't like other people's authority.

-- A.C. Benson

Think like a man of action. Act like a man of thought.

-- Henri Bergson

Life is 10% what you make it, and 90% how you take it.

-- Irving Berlin

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

-- George Bernard

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name knowledge.

-- Ambrose Bierce

Optimism: The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

-- Ambrose Bierce

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

-- Ambrose Bierce

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

--Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary," 1911

Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.

-- Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary, 1906

Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.

-- Josh Billings

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

-- Josh Billings

The Lord God has special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.

-- Otto von Bismarck

Politics is not an exact science.

-- Otto Von Bismarck, 1863

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

-- William Blake

One law for the lion and ox is oppression.

-- William Blake

Innocence dwells with wisdom, but never with ignorance.

-- William Blake

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

-- William Blake

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

-- Derek Bok

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

-- Niels Bohr

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

-- Erma Bombeck

An ugly carpet will last forever.

-- Erma Bombeck

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.

-- Erma Bombeck

A leader is a dealer in hope.

-- Napolen Bonaparte

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The great obstacle is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

-- Daniel J. Boorstin

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

--Victor Borge

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

-- James Bovard (1994)

Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die.

--Carmen Boyle (Olympic Luge Gold Medal winner - 1996)

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.

-- Joan Borysenko

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

-- Ron Boyd

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

-- Brancusi

Many a man has stood all his life, and in crowds, too, and yet never been noticed more than a lamp-post. Yes, less than that, for a lamp-post must by its nature hold up a lighted face.

-- Max Brand

Crowds of men are like crowds of sheep. Not the best, but the first leader is usually followed.

-- Max Brand

It was useless to try to corner a man who told stories. It was like trying to drink all the water in a lake to get at a bright pebble on the bottom of it.

-- Max Brand

Life is a grindstone; whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you're made of.

-- Jacob M. Braude

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man ... is above all the plaything of his memory.

-- Andre Breton

Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster.

--William Bridges

The plural of anecdote is not data.

-- Roger Brinner

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

-- Kent Brockman, THE SIMPSONS

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

-- Erma Brombeck

When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all.

-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Behind every successful man there's a lot of unsuccessful years.

-- Bob Brown

He who sees not into his own nature sees not anything at all.

-- Dean Brown (From: Learning & Teaching; a manual for teachers)

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.

-- Les Brown

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

-- Les Brown

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

-- Rita Mae Brown

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

-- John Buchan

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it may be recalled and perhaps remedied.

-- Pearl S. Buck

When I was young, I was put in a school for retarded kids for two years before they realized I actually had a hearing loss...and they called ME slow!

-- Kathy Buckley

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

-- Buddha

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.

-- Buddha

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

-- Buddha

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

-- Warren Buffett

All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

-- Edmund Burke

I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

-- Lester Burnham in 'American Beauty'

Too bad that all the people who know how to run this country are busy driving taxis and cutting hair.

-- George Burns

I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it.

-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

All poets are mad.

-- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

-- Frederick Busch

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

-- President Bush

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

-- George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

Failure will be sanctioned.

-- George W. Bush, referring to his ability to withhold money from states whose schools don't improve, a new element in the voucher debate.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

-- Samuel Butler

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of an idea within a wall of words.

-- Samuel Butler

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.

-- Samuel Butler

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.

-- Rhett Butler in GONE WITH THE WIND

Adversity is the first path to truth.

-- George Gordon Byron, 'Don Juan'

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

-- Michael Caine

Dreams, ideas, and plans not only are an escape, they give me purpose, a reason to hang on.

-- Steven Patrick Callahan

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

-- Joseph Campbell

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

-- Appius Claudius Carcus, c. 200 B.C.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

-- Thomas Carlyle

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

-- Dale Carnegie

To feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.

-- Pablo Casals

Each man has inside of him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated, but it takes courage for a man to listen to his own inner goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts.

-- Pablo Casals

The key to change is to let go of fear.

-- Rosanne Cash

Look, I don’t mean to be a sore loser, but when it's done ... if I'm dead ... kill him!

-- Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

-- C. W. Ceram

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

-- Allan K. Chalmers

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak.

-- Ralph Chaplin

Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you.

-- 'Cheers'

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

-- Earl of Chesterfield, 1746

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

-- Lord Chesterfield

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.

-- Lord Chesterfield

I am at one with my duality.

-- Chesterton

Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it's your job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you'd want to have dinner with.

-- Chesterton

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

-- Chesterton

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.

-- G.K. Chesterton

One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I am having a good time.

-- Christian Herald, June 1960, p. 31

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.

-- Francis P. Church

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

The price of greatness is responsibility.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.

-- Cicero

To stumble twice against the same stone is a proverbial disgrace.

-- Cicero

There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it.

-- Cicero

Faith has need of the whole truth.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Old age by nature is rather talkative.

-- Cicero, De Senectute

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

-- E. M. Cioran

We don't have to like each other. We're family.

-- Claudia (Holly Hunter), 'Home for the Holidays'

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.

-- Irvin S. Cobb

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.

-- Sir Barnett Cocks

Everything is easy - you just have to know how to do it!

-- Sir Barnett Cocks

How inimitably graceful children are in general--before they learn to dance.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

-- Charles Caleb Colton

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them. - Benjamin Franklin said it first.

-- David Comins

Confucius, he says, don't stop to think, you may forget to start again.

-- Confucius

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

-- Confucius

Some are born with knowledge, some derive it from study, and some acquire it only after a painful realization of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing.

--Confucius

The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.

-- Confucius

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.

-- Phil Connors, 'Groundhog Day'

Good looks open doors, but they don't keep you in the room.

-- Todd Coomber

I never married because I have three pets at home that serve the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls in the morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.

-- Marie Corelli

Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.

-- Don Corleone in "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo

To vanquish without danger is to triumph without glory.

-- Pierre Corneille

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

-- Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

If I hear and see and do and teach and practice, I understand even better.

-- Jay Cross

Be kind and considerate with your criticism. . . . It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

-- Malcom Cowley

My reputation precedes me. Otherwise I'd be late for all my appointments.

-- Harry Crumb in 'Who's Harry Crumb?'

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset

-- Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

each of us is at the center of the universe. so is everyone else.

-- e.e. cummings

each of us is at the center of the universe.so is everyone else.

-- e.e. cummings

Have no fear of perfection- you'll never reach it.

-- Salvador Dali

If we dare the darkness, we find the light. When human reasoning completely fails to entice answers, they come. We cannot force ourselves to think clearly, but we can become aware that we are not in clarity. Consciousness of our confusion then leads to a new kind of clearness in which there is no more doubt. It should not bother us in the slightest to suspect that there might be something wrong with the way we think. To the contrary, it should excite us, for we are on the doorstep to fantastic discoveries.

-- THE DAILY GURU

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

-- Charles Darwin

He turns not back who is bound to a star.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.

-- Clarence Darrow, (1924 summation, Leopold & Loeb trial)

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

-- Charles Darwin

Old age ain't no place for sissies.

-- Bette Davis

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.

-- Clarence Day

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.

-- James Dean

Emotional ups and downs as well as sexual kinks and twists are not obstacles, but self-shaped doorways that beckon us--repeatedly--by arousing and frustrating our deepest desires for divine openness and passionate surrender.

--From "Finding God Through Sex," a book by David Deida

The person who makes a success of living is one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That's dedication.

-- Cecil B. De Mille

Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt.

-- Antoinette Deshoulieres

Reality is that which when you stop believing in it doesn't go away.

-- Philip K. Dick

Have you got a brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so?

-- Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.

-- Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death; He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves; And immortality.

-- Emily Dickinson

We have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say, 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you're just in the way.

-- Ani Difranco

We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.

-- Phyllis Diller

As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

I scarce beleeve my love to be so pure as I had thought it was, Because it doth endure Vicissitude, and season, as the grasse.

-- John Donne

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions."

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

-- Frederick Douglass

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

-- Frederick Douglass

I've had years to be smart. Now I choose to be pleasant.

-- Elwood P. Dowd, "Harvey"

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

Beware the fury of a patient man.

-- John Dryden

A man is a success if he get up in the morning and does what he wants to do.

-- Bob Dylan

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

-- Amelia Earhart

In youth we learn; in age we understand.

-- Maria Ebner-Eschenbach

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

-- Albert Einstein

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

-- Albert Einstein

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

-- Albert Einstein

Computers are fast, accurate and stupid. Humans are slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond belief.

-- Albert Einstein

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

-- Albert Einstein

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

-- Albert Einstein

The world we have made as a result of the level of the thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level (of consciousness) at which we have created them. . .We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.

-- Albert Einstein

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler

-- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

-- Albert Einstein

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

-- Albert Einstein

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

-- Albert Einstein

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

Strange is our situation here on Earth.

-- Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

- Albert Einstein

It's never too late to be what you might have been.

-- George Eliott

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

-- T. S. Eliot

And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time.

-- T.S. Eliot

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

-- T.S. Eliot

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasting time.

-- T.S. Eliot

The art of love . . . is largely the art of persistence.

-- Albert Ellis

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Language is the archives of history.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

-- Epictetus

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

-- Epicurus

Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

-- Susan Ertz

The lucky man passes for a genius.

-- Euripides, 428 B.C.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

-- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood or assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

-- Antoine de Saint Exupery

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

- Saint Exupery, "The Little Prince"

I push my boundaries on a daily basis!!! I aim to grow spiritually within!!

-- Jenny F.

Any time of day is a good time for pie.

-- Fabienne, Pulp Fiction

Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

-- Ken Feldman contributed this uplifting "Thought for the Day"

If we continue to believe as we have always believed, we will continue to act as we have always acted. If we continue to act as we have always acted, we will continue to get what we have always gotten.

-- Marilyn Ferguson

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

-- Enrico Fermi

It was not so long ago that people thought semiconductors were part-time orchestra leaders and microchips were very, very small snack foods.

-- Geraldine Ferraro

Don't say you can't swear off drinking; it's easy. I've done it a thousand times.

-- W.C. Fields

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live on nothing but food and water.

-- W.C. Fields

Perhaps it is not in our nature to speak openly about what we hold so dear. But I believe this is exactly the time to think about happiness, in all of its permutations, since it is the determination to pursue happiness that makes us so American.

-- Rodes Fishburne

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars.

-- Gustave Flaubert

All I need now is a computer. And a ten year old kid to teach me how to use it.

-- Fletch (Chevy Chase) in FLETCH LIVES

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.

-- Bertha Flowers (writer)

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.

-- Malcolm Forbes

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

-- Henry Ford

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

-- Henry Ford

Hello, and welcome. I'm Dr. Clayton Forrester, and soon you will all bow down before me.

-- Dr. Clayton Forrester, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)

How can I tell what I think until I see what I say.

-- Edward Morgan Forster

Behind every successful woman...... is a basket of dirty laundry.

-- Sally Forth

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

-- Anne Frank

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

-- Viktor Frankl, M.D., Holocaust survivor

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

-- Benjamin Franklin

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.

-- Benjamin Franklin

God heals and the doctor takes the fees.

-- Benjamin Franklin

In my own private concerns with mankind, I have observed that to kick a little when under imposition has a good effect. A little sturdiness when superiors are much in the wrong sometimes occasions consideration.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Because television can make so much money doing its worst, it often cannot afford to do its best.

-- Fred W. Friendly

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

-- Robert Frost

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

-- Robert Frost

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

-- Robert Frost

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

-- Buckminster Fuller

I am a passenger on the spaceship Earth.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

It's not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree. It's what you do with your life that counts.

-- Millard Fuller

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.

-- Thomas Fuller

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

--Paul Fussell

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

The world is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.

-- Eduardo Galeano

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the univers to do.

-- Galileo

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

-- Indira Gandhi

It is knowledge that ultimately gives salvation.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Where there is love there is life.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, always.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Well, the truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination.

-- Garak, 'Deep Space Nine'

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

-- John W. Gardner

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

-- Romain Gary

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

-- Bill Gegenheimer

Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.

-- Ralph Gerard

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

-- Kahlil Gibran

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

-- Kahlil Gibran

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

-- Kahlil Gibran, 'The Vision'

Great people talk about ideas. Small people talk about other people.

-- Tobias S. Gibson

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

-- Dizzy Gillespie

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.

-- Allen Ginsberg

The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs...one step at a time.

-- Joe Girard

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

-- W.E. Gladstone

Make your life a mission-not an intermission.

-- Arnold Glasgow

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

-- Arthur Godfrey

Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

-- Johann von Goethe

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only when we know a little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

-- Joseph Heller Goethe

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

-- Goethe

Daring ideas are like chess men moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

-- Goethe

To know what everyone knows is to know nothing.

-- Remy de Gourmont

It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression.

-- Cary Grant

You'll always miss 100% of the shots you never take.

-- Wayne Gretsky

I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

-- Caspar Gutman in THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett

I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

-- HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

-- William Halsey

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away.

-- Dag Hamarskjold, Swedish statesman

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

-- Fannie Lou Hamer

Reputation, like a face, is the symbol of its possessor and creator, and another can use it only as a mask.

-- Judge Learned Hand

If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

-- Barry Hannah

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.

-- Rhonda Hansome

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

-- Julius Charles Hare

I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.

-- Mata Hari

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

-- Sydney J. Harris

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

-- Richard Harkness

Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something.

The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

-- Sir John Harvey-Jones

In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.

-- Paul Harvey

My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as it is and why it exists as all.

-- Stephen Hawking

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

-- Helen Hayes (at 73)

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.

-- William Hazlitt

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

-- William Hazlitt

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

-- William Hazlitt

When you want it bad,

You get it bad,

And most people want it in the worst way.

-- Heiden's First Law

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.

-- Jascha Heifetz

Abstract knowledge is always useful, sooner or later.

-- Robert A. Heinlein

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

-- Robert A. Heinlein

Never confuse motion for action.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

-- O. Henry

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

-- Heraclitus

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

-- Heraclitus

Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

-- Frank Herbert

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

-- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

-- George Herbert

Let's find out what everyone is doing, and then stop everyone from doing it.

-- A.P. Herbert

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me.

-- Mose Herzog, 'Herzog'

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

It's all fun and games, until someone loses an eye.

-- James Hetfield, Metallica

Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.

-- Cullen Hightower

The only way some of us exercise our minds is by jumping to conclusions.

-- Cullen Hightower

It's not the bulls and bears you need to avoid -- it's the bum steers.

-- Chuck Hillis

Do you really serve the Devil if it's all God's plan? Good and Evil need each other; Honey I'm your man.

-- Robyn Hitchcock in "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom

What luck for rulers that men do not think.

-- Adolf Hitler

Time's arrow, we are told, is a one-way thing. . . Memory's arrow, like the needle of a compass too close to a lodestone, spins in all directions.

-- Russell Hoban, "Amaryllis Night and Day"

If reality had a stage door I'd hang around there to see what comes out after the show.

-- Russell Hoban, "Amaryllis Night and Day"

I have no wisdom and nothing useful to tell you -- I only mentioned this because it came into my head.

-- Russell Hoban, FREMDER

What if I say to you that the universe is a three-legged horse, eh? What then?

--Russell Hoban

Fidelity is a matter of perception; nobody is unfaithful to the sea or to mountains or to death: once recognized they fill the heart.

-- Russell Hoban

Words have a life; without response they die.

-- Russell Hoban

Life is a process of one goneness after another.

-- Russell Hoban, "The Bat Tattoo"

In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

-- Eric Hoffer

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members.

-- Eric Hoffer, American philosopher

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice

We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Once stretched by a new idea, man's mind never returns to its original dimensions.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

-- Homer

Know from the bounteous heaven all riches flow.

-- Homer

I detest that man who hides one thing in the depth of his heart and speaks forth another.

-- Homer

Good families are generally worse than any others.

-- Anthony Hope

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.

-- Bob Hope

You manage things; you lead people.

-- Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, USN

This is a fault common to all singers: that among their friends they never are inclined to sing when they are asked; unasked, they never desist.

-- Horace

Whatever advice you give, be brief.

-- Horace, 20 B.C.

Youth flies.

-- Horace, 30 B.C.

Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the state craft for which you contend?

-- Hortensia, c. First Century B.C.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

-- Harlan Howard

The printed page was like wine to me.

-- Robert E. Howard

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary [person]. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary [person].

-- Elbert Green Hubbard

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

-- Elbert Green Hubbard

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

-- Victor Hugo

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

-- Victor Hugo

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

-- Hume

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

-- Hubert H. Humphrey

Good bankers, like good tea, can only be appreciated when they are in hot water.

-- Jaffar Hussein, Governor, Malaysian Central Bank

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

-- Aldous Huxley

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

-- Thomas Huxley

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.

-- Julian Huxley

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.

-- Lee Iacocca

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

-- Dolores Ibarruri

It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out.

-- Henrik Ibsen

A good way to end an era is to give it a name that sticks.

-- I. Illich

The journey of my soul does not end here on this Earth, but continues onward in creation. Enjoy your journey, because its Infinite.

-- Ivan /Atrayo, Wayfarer of the Soul

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?

-- Henry James, American writer

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

-- William James

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

-- Thomas Jefferson

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

-- Thomas Jefferson

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

-- Thomas Jefferson

The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise.

-- Samuel Johnson

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a riend, an acquaintance or a stranger.

-- Franklin Jones

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

-- Erica Jong

In my days, the players went into the clubhouse after a losing game with murder in their hearts. They would have thrown out any guy on his neck if they had even suspected him of intentions of singing.

-- Bill Joyce, 1916, played third base in the 1890s

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

-- James Joyce

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

-- James Joyce

Experience gives us the tests first and the lessons later.

-- Naomi Judd

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

-- Carl Jung

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

-- Carl Jung, M.D.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

-- Carl Jung, M.D.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

-- Carl Gustav Jung

No one becomes depraved all at once.

-- Juvenal

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

-- Immanuel Kant

We can invent only with memory.

--Alphonse Karr

I believe in nothing, but the holiness of the heart's affection and the truth of the imagination.

-- John Keats

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

-- John Keats

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

-- Garrison Keillor

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

-- Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

-- Helen Keller

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

-- Helen Keller

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

-- Helen Keller

Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?

-- Eugene Kennedy

Together we shall either save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames.

-- John F. Kennedy

Forgive but never forget.

-- John F. Kennedy

Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.

-- Rose Kennedy

It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

-- Elizabeth Kenny

Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

-- Walter Kerr

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

-- John Maynard Keynes

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking

-- John Maynard Keynes

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

-- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, (1813-1855), Philosopher

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.

-- B.B. King

Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram"? Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.

-- Jan King

We are all caught up in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly effects all indirectly.

-- Martin Luther King

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

-- Arthur Koestler

...one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.

-- Arthur Koestler

I banish fear with two words: You Lead.

-- Demetri Kolokotronis

Some people think only intellect counts -- knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

-- Dean Koontz

You're only as good as the people you hire.

-- Ray Kroc

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

-- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.

-- Laurie Kuslansky

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

-- Donald Laird

Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one sees the stars.

-- Frederick Langbridge

Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

-- Louis L'Amour

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

-- La Rochefoucauld

He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise.

-- Lao-Tzu

Pure morality is only an instinctive adjustment which the soul makes.

-- D. H. Lawrence

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

-- Fran Lebowitz

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

-- John Lennon, Imagine

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

-- C.S. Lewis

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

-- C.S. Lewis

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

-- W. M. Lewis

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.

-- Caryn Leschen

You are a sad, strange, little man. You have my pity. Farewell.

-- Buzz Lightyear, 'Toy Story'

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

-- Abraham Lincoln

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

-- Abraham Lincoln

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.

-- Abraham Lincoln

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.

-- Charles Lindbergh

It is surprising what people can do when they have to, and how little most people will do when they don't have to.

-- Walter Linn

It requires wisdom to understand wisdoom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

-- Walter Lippmann

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

-- Walter Lippman

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

-- Franz Liszt

Nothing hurts worse than the loss of money.

-- Livy

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

-- John Locke

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around.

-- David Lodge

Be excellent to each other.

-- Ted 'Theodore' Logan, 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.

-- Vince Lombardi

Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.

-- Vince Lombardi

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

-- Vince Lombardi

If, at first, you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.

-- Los Angeles Times

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art; to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.

-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis.

-- Barry Lopez

The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love.

-- Barry Lopez

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

-- Audre Lorde

A relationship is a movement across differences.

-- Lente-Lousie Louw

The older I get, there doesn't seem to be anything remotely more interesting than talking about love and the lack of it and what happens when it's taken away from someone who's had it.

-- Nick Lowe

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.

-- E. V. Lucas

Business more than any other occupation is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

-- Henry R. Luce

In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.

-- Robert Lynd

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

-- Douglas MacArthur, 1952

Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.

-- Madonna

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.

-- James Madison

If you can't make art, make your life a work of art.

-- Andre Malraux

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-- Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

-- Horace Mann

He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.

-- Mickey Mantle

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.

-- Orison Swett Marden

Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it.

-- Beryl Markham

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

-- Don Marquis

An optimist is a guy that never has had much experience.

-- Don Marquis

Brace yourself for immediate disintegration.

-- Marvin the Martian

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

-- Groucho Marx

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you got it made.

-- Groucho Marx

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

-- Groucho Marx

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

-- Abraham Maslow

He that knows no guilt can know no fear.

-- Philip Massinger

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.

-- Dave Mathews Band

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

-- W. Somerset Maugham

In violence, we forget who we are.

-- Mary McCarthy

We figured there was too much happiness here for just the two of us, so we figured the next logical step was to have us a critter.

-- H.I. McDonough, 'Raising Arizona'

Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.

-- Terry McKay, 'An Affair to Remember'

"If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I wouldn't jump with them, I'd be at the bottom to catch them."

"Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say."

-- Tim McGraw

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

-- Tim McGraw

This has all the earmarks of an eyesore.

-- James McSheehy, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, commenting on a construction project he opposed.

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

-- Margaret Mead

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

-- H. L. Mencken

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

-- Mencius

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

-- H.L. Mencken

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

-- H.L. Mencken

It may help to think of language as a great field of word plants. Whenever most people focus their attention on one subject, it's like a great dose of fertilizer and rain on that portion of the field. Existing words grow and flower into new meanings. Nouns sprout verbs.

-- Allan Metcalf

Life isn't all beer and skittles; few of us have touched a skittle in years.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, 'First Fig'

The heart can push the sea and land / Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, / And let the face of God shine through.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

-- Arthur Miller

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

-- Henry Miller

To philosophize is to doubt.

-- Montaigne

Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.

-- Montaigne

A child is mysterious and powerful and contains within the secret of human nature.

-- Maria Montessori

To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.

-- Maria Montessori

Adversity introduces a man to himself.

-- Alonzo Mourning

To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.

-- Prophet Muhammad (attributed)

You have to have Soul. But if you don't have Soul, Halibut will do.

-- The Muppets

Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.

-- Iris Murdock

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

-- Ralph Nader

And of course, with the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth - the critic.

-- Narrator in 'History of the World: Part I' (1981)

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.

-- Ogden Nash

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.

-- Cynthia Nelms

The difference between a dog and a human is that, when you point, a dog looks at the tip of your finger. A human looks in the direction you point.

-- paraphrased from Nick Negroponte, 1998

Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.

-- Gerard de Nerval

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

-- Nietzsche

Dreams are necessary to life.

-- Anais Ninn, writer (1903-1977)

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

-- Anais Ninn, writer (1903-1977)

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

-- Anais Ninn, writer (1903-1977)

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

-- Anais Ninn, Writer (1903-1977)

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

-- Anais Ninn, writer (1903-1977)

If you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to ask someone else first.

-- Nirvana, Milk It

A beautiful lady is an accident of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art.

-- Louis Nizer

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them go get on with it.

-- David Ogilvy

Oh, that wasn't the first time I was thrown out of a window and it won't be the last. What can I say? I'm a rebel!

-- Old Man, 'The Emperor's New Groove'

Tomorrow is another day.

-- Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

A writer's work, if it speaks at all, speaks for him.

-- Frank O'Rourke

In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

-- George Orwell

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

-- George Orwell

Nothing is more powerful than habit.

-- Ovid

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

-- Satchel Paige

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.

-- Thomas Paine

There are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests.

-- Lord Palmerston, 19th century British Foreign Secretary

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

-- Dorothy Parker

The time to live and the place to die. That's all any man gets. No more, no less.

-- Parson (Hank Worden) in The Alamo

I wanted to be the first woman to burn her bra, but it would have taken the fire department four days to put it out.

-- Dolly Parton

It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.

-- Blaise Pascal

Chance favors the prepared mind.

-- Louis Pasteur

Freedom is rarely lost in a single stroke. The danger lies in losing it bit by bit.

-- Dennis Patrick, former FCC Chairman

He who has more knowledge than judgment is made for another man's use more than his own.

-- William Penn

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

-- Laurence J. Peter

It's not an insult to have a past and to have some accountability to it.

-- Grant-Lee Phillips

One more such victory and we are lost.

-- Phyrrhus, on beating the Romans at the Battle of the Asculum

A man on a date wonders if he'll get lucky. The woman knows.

-- Monica Piper

Behind every successful woman...is a substantial amount of coffee.

-- Stephanie Piro

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

-- Plato

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

-- Gaius Plinius (c. 61 - 112 A.D.)

You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

-- John J. Plomp

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

-- Plutarch

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Order is heaven's first law.

-- Alexander Pope

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

-- Karl Popper

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 19,999 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.

-- Popular Mechanics, 1949

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

-- John Powell

He didn't administer the reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.

-- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

-- J.B. Priestley, 1957

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence.

-- Philip Pullman

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance.

-- Robert Quillen

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

-- Mitch Ratliffe

An inferiority complex would be a blessing, if only the right people had it.

-- Alan Reed

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

-- Christopher Reeve

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.

-- Theodore Reik

Oh yeah, we know each other real well -- although I don’t think we’ve ever fleshmet.

-- Howard Rheingold, apostle of technology and pioneer of virtual communities

How come if we can send a man to the Moon, we can't send a man to the Moon anymore?

-- Commander Rick in PRISONERS OF GRAVITY

Luck is the residue of design.

-- Branch Rickey

Well, there are some things a man just can't run away from.

-- The Ringo Kid (John Wayne) in Stagecoach

To the world you might just be one person - but to one person you might just be the world.

What is here is there too.

-- The Rig Veda

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.

-- James Whitcomb Riley

No knower, no knowledge. . . know knower, know knowledge.

-- Evelyn D. Robertson

When the master has no tools, every hammer looks like a screwdriver.

-- Steve Robertson

Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.

-- Sylvia Robinson

It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.

-- La Rochefoucauld

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

-- Theodore Roethke

Everything is funny as long as it happens to someone else.

-- Will Rogers

This would be a great world to dance in if you didn't have to pay the fiddler.

-- Will Rogers

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

-- Will Rogers

If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.

-- Will Rogers

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

-- Will Rogers

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in.

-- Will Rogers

Don't squat with your spurs on.

-- Will Roger

There's two theories to arguin' with a woman. Neither one works.

-- Will Rogers

Never slap a man who's chewin' tobacco.

-- Will Rogers

It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.

-- Will Rogers

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

-- Will Rogers

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

-- Will Rogers

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

-- Will Rogers, From 'The Wisdom of Will Rogers'

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

-- Jim Rohn

You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you cannot do.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Innocence is ashamed of nothing.

-- Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762

It wasn't raining when Noah built the arc.

-- Howard Ruff

The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.

-- John Ruskin

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

-- John Ruskin American writer (1819-1900)

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

-- Bertrand Russell

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

-- Bertrand Russell

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

-- Bertrand Russell

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

-- W. S.

Whoever acquires knowledge and does not practice it resembles he who plows his land and leaves it unsown.

-- Saadi

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

-- William Safire

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

-- Saint-Exupery

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

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

-- Carl Sandburg

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. [T]hey laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

-- Carl Sagan

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

-- Carl Sandburg

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

-- George Santayana

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

-- George Santayana

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.

-- Alan Saporta

Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.

-- Jean Paul Sartre

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

The zeal of friends it is that knocks me down, and not the hate of enemies.

-- J.C.F. Von Schiller

Literature is the immortality of speech.

-- August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

-- Albert Schweitzer

Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?

-- Frank Scully

The phrase "working mother" is redundant.

-- Jane Sellman

Fire is the test of gold, adversity of strong men.

-- Seneca, 1st Century A.D.

It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.

-- Seneca

Nobody becomes guilty by fate.

-- Seneca, 1st Century A.D.

Nature has given to us the seeds of knowledge, but not knowledge itself.

-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free...

-- Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts

Action is eloquence.

-- Shakespeare, Coriolanus, III, ii

Love all, trust a few.

-- Shakespeare, "All's Well That Ends Well"

Mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes.

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear. Act i. Sc. 1.

Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

-- Shakespeare

He is well paid that is well satisfied.

-- Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.

-- Tupac Shakur

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- George Bernard Shaw

An idea that no one believes can not be proved too often.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

-- George Bernard Shaw

All progress means war with society.

-- George Bernard Shaw

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days, it will be.

-- Jeremy Schwartz

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals...except the weasel.

-- Homer Simpson

Be myself? I've been myself for eight years and it hasn't worked.

-- Lisa Simpson

Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known...then went crazy as a loon.

-- Lisa Simpson

There are compensations for growing older. One is the realization that to be sporting isn't at all necessary. It is a great relief to reach this stage of wisdom.

-- Cornelia Otis Skinner

Thank heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go enjoy it.

-- Logan Pearsall Smith

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.

-- Carrie Snow

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.

-- Joseph Sobran (1995)

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

-- Ralph W. Sockman

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

-- Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

-- Socrates, 5th Century B.C.

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

-- Socrates

Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

-- Sophocles

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

-- Thomas Sowell

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

-- Herbert Spencer

There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.

-- Richard Steele

"What is the answer?"

(Silence)

"In that case, what is the question?"

-- Gertrude Stein's last words

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

-- Gloria Steinem

A hungry man is not a free man.

-- Adlai Stevenson

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

-- Robert Louis Stephenson

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

-- Laurence Sterne

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

-- Adlai Stevenson

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

-- Adlai Stevenson

Making the decision to have a child is momentous -- it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

-- Elizabeth Stone

Friends are God's way of taking care of us.

If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend.

-- Stone Temple Pilots

Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.

-- August Strindberg

Men are like a deck of cards. You'll find the occasional king, but most are jacks.

-- Laura Swenson

For some life lasts a short while, but the memories it holds last forever.

-- Laura Swenson

The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

-- Anne Sophie Swetchine

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

-- Jonathan Swift

Necessity knows no law.

-- Publilius Syrus

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

-- Publilius Syrus, 1st Century B.C.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

-- Thomas Szasz

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.

-- Sara Teasdale

When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

-- Edward Teller

Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.

-- Edward Teller

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

-- Corrie Ten Boom, author and Holocaust survivor

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

One martini is all right, two is too many, three is not enough.

-- James Thurber

What a difference there is between a wise man and a fool.

-- Terence, Eunuchus

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

-- Margaret Thatcher

Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.

-- Theognis, 6th Century B.C.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

-- Mother Theresa

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

Our life is frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify, Simplify.

-- Henry David Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

-- Henry David Thoreau

How can he remember well his ignorance, which his growth requires, who has so often to use his knowledge?

-- Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify.

-- Henry David Thoreau

I was determined to know beans.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their tools.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

-- Alvin Toffler

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It's the other lousy 2% that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

-- Lily Tomlin

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

-- Lily Tomlin

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.

-- Lily Tomlin

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

-- Lily Tomlin

I have always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.

-- Lily Tomlin

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

-- Arnold Toynbee

Fortune favors the brave; and the world certainly gives the most credit to those who are able to give an unlimited credit to themselves.

-- Anthony Trollop, Bertrams XXXV

You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have and the more new light I throw on it.

-- Mark Twain

The difference between truth and fiction: Fiction has to make sense.

-- Mark Twain

We ought never to do wrong when people are looking.

-- Mark Twain

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

-- Mark Twain

It is easier to stay out than get out.

-- Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

-- Mark Twain

It isn't what you don't know that will hurt you. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

-- Mark Twain

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

-- Mark Twain

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

-- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer Abroad"

Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

-- Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

-- Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

-- Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You might die of a misprint.

-- Mark Twain

The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

-- Mark Twain

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.

-- Lao-Tzu

To fall into a habit is to cease to be.

-- Miguel de Unamuno

I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they learned to swim.

-- U2, Until The End Of The World

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

-- Jennifer Unlimited

Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.

-- Jennifer Unlimited

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

-- John Updike, "Rabbit at Rest"

History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.

-- Jeff VanderMeer

On second thought, I think I am more crazy than my goat.

-- Remedios Varo

We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.

-- Bill Vaughan

Take eloquence and wring its neck.

-- Paul Verlaine

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.

-- Gore Vidal

May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.

-- Duc de Villars

Love truth, but pardon error.

-- Voltaire

He who is only wise lives a sad life.

-- Voltaire

The folks who know the truth aren't talking. The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up.

-- Tom Waits

It ain't so much the things you don't know that get you in trouble. It's the things you know that just ain't so.

-- Artimus Ward, 1834-1867

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

-- Evelyn Waugh

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let him know that you trust him.

-- Booker T. Washington

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company."

-- George Washington

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

-- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

I am proud of what I am. I am -- a librarian!

-- Rachel Weisz in the film THE MUMMY

I'm gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn't pay.

-- Gillian Welch

Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery.

-- H. G. Wells

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

-- H.G. Wells

Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen.

-- H.G. Wells

You shoot me in a dream, you'd better wake up and apologize.

-- Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) in RESERVOIR DOGS

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

-- Alfred North Whitehead

Day full-blown and splendid - day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

-- Walt Whitman, 'A Song of the Rolling Earth'

Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?

-- Edward Whittemore, "Nile Shadows"

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

-- Charlotte Whitton

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?

-- Dr. Who

Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.

-- Norbert Wiener

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

-- Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

-- Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

-- Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

-- Oscar Wilde

The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

-- Thornton Wilder

I didn't grow up in a mom-and-pop, Ozzie and Harriet type of environment, but who did?

-- Lucinda Williams

What power has love but forgiveness?

-- William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Brueghel

It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.

-- William Carlos Williams

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.

-- Tennessee Williams

There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.

-- Edmund Wilson

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

-- Oprah Winfrey

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

-- Alfred North Whitehead

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

-- Winnie the Pooh

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.

-- William Wirt

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

The beginning is always today.

-- Mary Wollstonecraft

There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.

-- Robert Woodruff

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

-- Virginia Woolf

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

-- Virginia Woolf

Faith is a passionate intuition.

-- William Wordsworth

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

-- Steven Wright

With calm eyes gauge your fellow men; with a calm heart deal with all matters; with a calm mind find the reason in things.

-- Hong Yingming

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

-- William Arthur Ward

Do or do not; there is no try.

-- Yoda, Stars Wars

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

-- Lin Yutang

Regard thy table as the table before the Lord. Chew well, and hurry not.

-- Zohar (A.D. 13th century)

If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

-- Zig Zigler

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

-- Zig Zigler

It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.

-- Zig Zigler

If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.

-- Zig Zigler

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

-- Zig Zigler

Some people's minds are like cement--all mixed up and permanently set.

-- Anonymous

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

-- Anonymous

The road to ruin is always kept in good repair.

-- Anonymous

Trends, like horses, are easier to ride in the direction they are going.

-- Anonymous

The future struggles against being mastered.

-- Anonymous

A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth gets its pants on.

-- Anonymous

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.

-- Proverb (African)

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.

-- Proverb (African)

All truth is good, but not all truth is good to say.

-- Proverb (African)

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

-- Proverb (Arab)

Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.

-- Proverb (Arab)

He gives double who gives unasked.

-- Proverb (Arab)

Throw a lucky man into the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth.

-- Proverb (Arab)

If thy enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum.

Passionate kiss like spider's web, soon lead to undoing of fly.

Virginity like bubble, one prick all gone.

Man who run in front of car get tired.

Man who run behind car get exhausted.

Man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.

Foolish man give wife grand piano, wise man give wife upright organ.

Man who walk thru airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.

Man with one chopstick go hungry.

Man who scratches ass should not bite fingernails.

Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.

Baseball is wrong, man with four balls cannot walk.

Panties not best thing on earth but next to best thing on earth.

War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.

Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse.

Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.

It take many nails to build crib but one screw to fill it.

Man who drive like hell bound to get there.

Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.

Man who lives in glass house should change clothes in basement.

Man who fishes in other man's well often catches crabs.

Man who farts in church sits in own pew.

-- Proverbs (Chinese)

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

-- Proverb (Chinese)

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

-- Proverb (Chinese)

A joy that's shared is a joy made double.

-- Proverb (English)

When a man begins to reason, he ceases to feel.

-- Proverb (French)

Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass.

-- Proverb (Japanese)

Hold a true friend with both your hands.

-- Proverb (Nigerian)

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.

-- Proverb (Scottish)

Fear less, hope more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Hate less, love more; And all good things are yours.

-- Proverb (Swedish)

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.

-- Proverb (Taoist)

The journey is the reward.

-- Proverb (Taoist)

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid a hundred days of sorrow.

-- Proverb (Tibetan)

A word said is a shot fired.

-- Proverb (Uzbek)

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.

- -Proverb (Zen)

Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free.

-- Unknown

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.

-- Unknown

Include the success of others in your dreams for your own success.

-- Unknown

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. No one can count the apples in a seed.

-- Unknown

The greatest threat towards future is indifference.

-- Unknown

Every revolutionary idea - in science, politics, art, or whatever - evokes three stages of reaction in a hearer:

1. It is completely impossible - don't waste my time.

2. It is possible, but it is not worth doing.

3. I said it was a good idea all along

-- Unknown

I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!

-- Unknown

My work is done. Why wait?" Kodak founder George Eastman wrote in his suicide note. Call us craven materialists, but we can come up with about a million reasons.

-- Unknown

Play with boundaries, not within.

-- Unknown (Bill Daul)

If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I wouldn't jump with them, I'd be at the bottom to catch them.

-- Unknown

7 mantra's

-- Unknown

The combination of intelligence and Love is what real Wisdom is about. One or the other alone is often not enough....

-- Unknown

Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say.

-- Unknown

The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person?

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

-- Unknown

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

-- Unknown

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

-- Unknown

Do not rest until you are tired.

-- Unknown

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

-- Unknown

You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore

-- Unknown

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

-- From INTRODUCING CHAOS

Senior Citizens Prayer

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

HONOR YOUR PATH

I drink from your well.

I bring an unprotected heart to our meeting place.

I hold no cherished outcome.

I will not negotiate by withholding.

I am not subject to disappointment.

--Druid Vow of Friendship

Be a traveler, not a tourist.

-- Wall of a hostel in Maui

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

-- A wise bathroom wall


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Updated April 2, 2004