 |
|
|
|
I love quotes. They're parts of someone else's life experience that you can package up and take with you. I get a lot of my quotes from a website called The Quotation Center. This is a great website with a huge database of quotes from all corners, and a search engine to help you find them.
These are simply some of my favorites. There are many, many more out there. |
| Akhenaton: |
"Indulge not thyself in the passion of anger; it is whetting a sword to wound thine own breast, or murder thy friend."
"Say not that honor is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: It is not to the action that it is due, but to the manner of performing it."
"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance."
"As the ostrich when pursued hideth his head, but forgetteth his body; so the fears of a coward expose him to danger."
"Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou."
"Labor not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was ."
|
| William Blake: |
"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."
"What is now proved was only once imagined."
"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."
"The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure."
"Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth."
"Cruelty has a Human Heart,And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal'd, The Human Heart its hungry gorge."
"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity. . . and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."
"When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree."
"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent."
"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise."
"I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."
|
| Lord Byron: |
"All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise."
"No ear can hear nor tongue can tell the tortures of the inward hell!"
"To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin."
"Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce."
"Adversity is the first path to truth."
"Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep."
"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."
-Adapted From Lord Byron |
| H. L. Mencken: |
"Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly."
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."
"Demagogue:One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
"There's always an easy solution to every human problem; Neat, plausible and wrong."
"One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent."
"A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men."
"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable."
"Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true."
"What men value in this world is not rights but privileges."
"Self-respect -The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious."
"The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake."
"The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it."
|
| Friedrich Nietzche: |
"You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that."
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
"Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good."
"We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent."
"One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed."
"Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride."
"Everyone who has ever built anywhere a 'new heaven' first found the power thereto in his own hell."
"To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity."
"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."
"The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell."
"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."
"When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets."
"The best friend is likely to acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is based on the talent for friendship."
|
| Mark Twain: |
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
"Always do right -this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."
"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers,
and sometimes to others. If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to
whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply
watch your chance and hit him with a brick. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined."
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that
is in it -and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits
down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -and
that is well; but she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
"Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion
which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.
Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking,
Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the
approval of other people. The result is Conformity."
"Emotions are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out
of whole cloth;it is easier to manufacture seven facts than
one emotion."
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves."
"You get a leetle too much costumery onto your statements. Always dress
a fact in tights, never in an ulster."
"Experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and
restore it to rugged health."
"Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
"Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his
party did not miss the boat."
"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it
and remove all doubt."
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still
exist, but you have ceased to live."
"Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know."
"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read."
"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their
industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting
of a brave, determined spirit."
"Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry."
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged
to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
"Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't."
"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -another man's,
I mean."
"Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review before
us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through those
ages, 'leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and other signs of the progress of the human race,' as
Satan observed."
"When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being
able to deceive other people."
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
"Put all your eggs in the one basket and -WATCH THAT BASKET."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -not absence of fear."
"Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good
many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her."
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people
always do that; but the really great make you feel that you,
too, can become great."
"Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man; but
coaxed downstairs a step at a time."
"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
as if she had laid an asteroid."
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to
pause and reflect."
"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because
we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by
prying into that matter."
"It is better to support schools than jails."
"War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas
moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely
to be dull."
"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
"It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise."
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who
are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
"I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot
be solved by your departure." |
| Voltaire: |
"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."
"Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination."
"History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead."
"The best is the enemy of the good."
"The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors."
"A long dispute means both parties are wrong."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." |
| Others: |
"Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth."
-Aesop
"In design, sometimes one plus one equals three."
-Josef Albers
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort."
-Herm Albright
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence
then, is not an act, but a habit."
-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 -this is not easy."
-Aristotle
"You cannot get ahead while you are getting even."
-Dick Armey
"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."
-Saint Augustine
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
-Saint Augustine
"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page."
-Saint Augustine
"If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don't accept, because you will
lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request,
accept because you will gain one friend."
-Saint Augustine
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it
true. You may have to work for it, however."
-Richard Bach
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."
-Richard Bach
"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have
been left out of the pleasure."
-Russell Baker
"Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one
toward the future, toward eternity."
-Daniel Barenboim
"He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you
know. Not like a tame lion."
-Mr. Beaver
"It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich."
-Henry Ward Beecher
"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully
upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
-Alexander Graham Bell
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
-Bernard Berenson
"Deliberation, n. The act of examining one's bread to determine which
side it is buttered on."
-Ambrose Bierce
"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
-Attributed (probably erroneously) to Otto Von Bismark
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
-Niels Bohr
"There can be no peace without reconciliation, there can be no reconciliation
without forgiveness, there can be no forgiveness without abandoning all hope
of a better past"
-Landrum Bolling
"The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color
and suspense to all our life."
-Daniel Boorstin
"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're
part of the road."
-Stewart Brand
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; while in practice, there is."
-Benjamin Brewster
"His mind is so open that the wind whistles through it."
-Heywood Broun
"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's
brow."
-Charles Browder
"Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel."
-Charles Brownson
"My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus,
and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of
relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus
(the Other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the
human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn
them in to the Pasteur Institute."
-William Burroughs
"There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd
be dead in two weeks."
-William Burroughs
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds;
and the pessimist fears this is true."
-James Branch Cabell
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without
it."
-G. K. Chesterton
"Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the
room."
-Winston Churchill
"Adversity does not build character; adversity reveals character."
-Sandy Dahl
"Every decision you make is a mistake."
-Edward Dahlberg
"...DULL, DULL SOULS, MERE CONSUMERS OF FOOD, WHO THINK THEIR INSTINCTS
ARE EMOTIONS AND THEIR TINY LIVES OF MORE ACCOUNT THAN A WHISPER OF WIND."
-Death
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."
-W. Edwards Deming
"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do
your best."
-W. Edwards Deming
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."
-Charles Dickens
"Logic! Why don't they teach logic at these schools?"
-Digory
"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
-Albert Einstein
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of
thinking that created them."
-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
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind."
-Albert Einstein
"Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't
mean to do harm; But the harm does not interest them."
-T.S. Eliot
"What you do speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The haves and the have-nots can often be traced back to the dids and the
did-nots."
-D.O. Flynn
"Neurosis seems to be a human privilege."
-Sigmund Freud
"Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't
have to experience it."
-Max Frisch
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-Galileo Galilei
"Josh Billings said, 'It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.' Human
beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running
away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems."
-John W. Gardner
"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied, "Only stand out of my light." Perhaps
some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best
things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
-John W. Gardner
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
-Mohandas Ghandi
"Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much?"
-Goethe
"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -and therefore never scrutinize or question."
-Stephen Jay Gould
"A dog is just a dog until he faces you; then he is Mister Dog."
-Haitian Proverb
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By
definition, there are already enough people to do that."
-G. H. Hardy
"There are more fools in the world than there are people."
-Heinrich Heine
"It's tough to be around shit without getting it on you."
-Robert O. Hite
"God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest."
-J.G. Holland
"The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one."
-Elbert Hubbard
"If you have no enemies you are apt to be in the same predicament in regard
to friends."
-Elbert Hubbard
"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
-Elbert Hubbard
"The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do
better work."
-Elbert Hubbard
"The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist, the
opportunity in every difficulty."
-L.P. Jacks
"Any proposal must be viewed as follows. Do not pay overly much attention
to the benefits that might be delivered were the law in question to be properly
enforced, rather one needs to consider the harm done by the improper enforcement
of this particular piece of legislation, whatever it might be."
-Lyndon B. Johnson
"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought
in our life, or in the life of another."
-Helen Keller
"All of life is a foreign country."
-Jack Kerouac
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot
drive out hate; only love can do that."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There
is an almost universal quest for half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some
people more than having to think."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."
-Frank Leahy
"Love makes fools, marriage cuckolds, and patriotism malevolent imbeciles."
-Paul Leautaud
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
-Vladimir Lenin
"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."
-Abraham Lincoln
"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what
we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
-Abraham Lincoln
"Nice guys finish last. But winning the race isn't the best thing that could happen, nor even what we're
trying to do."
-James Lipuma
"One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury
the failures of the past."
-James Long
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
-Attributed to Nasrudin
"Impersonal criticism is like an impersonal fistfight or an impersonal marriage,
and as successful."
-George Jean Nathan
"Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?"
-Axel Oxenstierna
"The only things that will be remembered about my enemies after they're dead is the nasty things I've
said about them."
-Camille Paglia
"The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit."
-Charles S. Pierce
"Music helps you to feel things."
-Fred Rogers
"No one wants a good education. Everyone wants a good degree."
-Lee Rudolph
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent
are full of doubt."
-Bertrand Russell
"Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes
it permanent."
-Marilyn Vos Savant
"We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have
I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue
acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day
to the shrift."
-Senaca
"...But Hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices,
is purely painful -horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has it's
pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by
which a frightened man reimburses himself for the
miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred
is also a great anodyne for shame."
-Screwtape
"Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there
by the action of their own wills."
-Screwtape
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
-John A. Shedd
"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
-Upton Sinclair
"There’s no free lunch in this world unless you’re willing to run around to different dumpsters to get it."
-Stay SaaSy
"Ninety percent of everything is crap."
-Theodore Sturgeon
"When the map and the terrain disagree; believe the terrain."
-Swiss Army Maxim
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but not one thinks of changing himself."
-Tolstoy
"Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish
what is worth reading."
-G. M. Trevelyan
"A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to
sea and do new things."
-Henry S. Tropp
"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants
shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."
-Elton Trueblood
"If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'."
-Unknown
"People with extraordinary minds, talk about ideas. People with average
minds, talk about events. People with simple minds, talk about other people."
-Unknown
"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the
one that crushed it."
-Unknown
"We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?"
-Unknown
"When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person, don't
be surprised if they learn their lesson."
-Unknown
"Very funny Scotty... Now beam down my clothes."
-Unknown
"Opportunity doesn't necessarily knock on the door; it may be leaning
against the wall waiting to be noticed."
-Unknown
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's
dog around."
-Unknown
"Education is no substitute for intelligence."
-Unknown
"The best way to deal with your present PC platform is to go outside, take
a walk, and sit under a tree (something all of us should do now and then).
Take a break from electricity. Computers can be really cool, but they are still
nothing compared to the wonderment of a simple tree."
-Unknown
"If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea."
-Unknown
"It's not a problem that we have a problem. It's a problem if we don't
deal with the problem."
-Mary Kay Utech
"Fear is proof of a degenerate mind."
-Vergil
"I've only been in love with a beer bottle and a mirror."
-Sid Vicious
"Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions.
There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs."
-John Vincent
"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's
ever anything really meaningful to say."
-Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
"Greetings, I am pleased to see that we are different. May we together become
greater than the sum of both of us."
-Vulcan Greeting Written By Some Star Trek Writer
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
-Tom Waits
"Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like
you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget
you."
-William Arthur Ward
"There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high,
simple and useful life."
-Booker T. Washington
"Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of
a child."
-Ron Wild
"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young
know everything."
-Oscar Wilde
"Always love your enemies-nothing annoys them so much."
-Oscar Wilde
"You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't
feel insecure around you."
-Marianne Williamson
"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because
thorns have roses."
-Tom Wilson
"Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless
of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction
happens to his body and soul."
-Zoroaster |
|
|
|
