You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering. – Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. -Epictetus
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. -Thomas Carlyle
While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior. -Henry C. Link
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering. – Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. -Epictetus
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. -Thomas Carlyle
While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior. -Henry C. Link
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. -Henry David Thoreau
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. -Mark Twain
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. -Albert Camus
If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. -Moshe Dayan
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live. -George Bernard Shaw
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure. -Jean Jacques Rousseau
They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. -Emily Dickinson
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right. -Isaac Asimov
I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly. -Stendhal
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. -George Washington
Create dangerously. -Camus
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper. -Dr. Thomas Fuller
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. -Martin Luther King Jr.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. -Mark Twain
One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have to to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick. -Rabbi Harold Kushner
A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. -Louis L’Amour
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. -Martin Luther King Jr.
First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again – and, moreover, give reasons why we believe. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. -W. Somerset Maugham
There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -Colette
We are most alive when we’re in love. -John Updike
A man’s obediance to his own genius is faith in its purest form. -Emerson
The self identity of Man is transcultural, and thus cannot have any single point of reference. Pluralism is not synonymous with tolerance of a variety of opinions. Pluralism amounts to the recognition of the unthinkable, the absurd, and up to a limit, intolerable. Reality in itself does not need to be transparent intelligible. – Raimundo Panikkar
Life isn’t long enough for love and art. -W. Somerset Maugham
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis. -Margaret Bonnano
Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. -Alice May Brock
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. -Bertrand Russell
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience. -Shelley Winters
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake–which I also keep handy. -W. C. Fields
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more. -Woody Allen
The charges of the hysterics are revealed for what they are: castles in the air built on misrepresentation, supported by unfounded fear, held aloft by hysteria. – John Ashcroft
No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. -Michel de Montaigne
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. -Sally Kempton
To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act. -Anatole France
God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me. -Thomas H. Huxley
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. -John Ruskin
Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master. -Demosthenes
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster. -Quentin Crisp
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -H. L. Mencken
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. -Maurice Maeterlinck
If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place. -Cicero
Don’t fall before you’re pushed. -English Proverb
Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was. -Margaret Mitchell
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper. -Dr. Thomas Fuller
There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -Colette
We are most alive when we’re in love. -John Updike
collected quotes from September 2003 collected_quotes_from_september_2004 32 0 pingsdone 0 1178 open b2evGMco.b2evALnk.b2WPAutP.b2evSmil
Edit Delete 130 1 2003-12-30 03:18:52 2004-12-10 03:19:45 published en-CA A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. -Mark Twain
Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. -Samuel Johnson
I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand. -Sir Edward Appleton
Hate no one; hate their vices, not themselves. -J. G. C. Brainard
Let us have a care not to disclose our hearts to those who shut up theirs against us. -Francis Beaumont
The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. -Herbert Spencer
Love the ones you can. Touch the ones you can reach. Let the others go. -Real Live Preacher
Don’t throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water. -Swedish Proverb
Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well. -Mahatma Gandhi
Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. -Henry George
Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place. -Ice T
Some think it’s holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it’s letting go. -Sylvia Robinson
The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children. -King Edward VIII
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death. -Saki
The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’. -Larry Hardiman
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it. -C. P. Snow
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -Leo Tolstoy
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. -Voltaire
To be amused by what you read–that is the great spring of happy quotations. -C. E. Montague
[S]he refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. -Zelda Fitzgerald
Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities. -William Bridges
Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter. -Paxton Hood
The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face. -Jim Bishop
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. -Henri Bergson
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent. -Carl Jung
Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense. -Arnold Bennett
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. -Annie Dillard
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches. -Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. -Sinclair Lewis
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. -Harlan Ellison
The joy of a spirit is the measure of its power. -Ninon de Lenclos
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. -Thomas Carlyle
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. -Walter Bagehot
I am not young enough to know everything. -Oscar Wilde
I find nothing more depressing than optimism. -Paul Fussell
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. -Robert Frost
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. -Bertrand Russell
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. -Voltaire
If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -Harry S Truman
America is a mistake, a giant mistake. -Sigmund Freud
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. -Mark Twain
Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber. -Elbert Hubbard
Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation. -Woodrow Wilson
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend. -Alexander Pope
All things must change to something new, to something strange. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. -Franklin P. Jones
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. -Robertson Davies
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. -Henry David Thoreau
The best mirror is an old friend. -George Herbert
Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? -Frank Scully
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance. -Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. -Mahatma Gandhi
That best portion of a good man’s life, / His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. -William Wordsworth
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. -James Thurber
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact. -Edmund Burke
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. -Groucho Marx
I’m just a person trapped inside a woman’s body. -Elaine Boosler
Memory feeds imagination. -Amy Tan
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. -Francis Maitland Balfour
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. -Henry David Thoreau
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. -Meister Eckhart
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them! -Friedrich Nietzsche
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. -Ellen Parr
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. -Thomas Jefferson
The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. -Mark Twain
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. -Alfred Lord Tennyson
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.-Bernard Bailey
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. -Edgar Allan Poe
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out. -Jane Austen
It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted. -Seneca
We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. -Charles Caleb Colton
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -Mark Twain
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. -Vladimir Nabokov
Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations. -Orson Welles
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented. -Edith Sitwell
I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. -Garrison Keillor
Life is a long lesson in humility. -James M. Barrie
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -Jules de Gaultier
I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. -Fritz Perls
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth. -Benjamin Disraeli
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr
No problem is so formidable that you can’t walk away from it. -Charles M. Schulz
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. -Oscar Wilde
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. -Helen Keller
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. -Aristotle
Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week. -Alice Walker
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth. -Charles A. Dana
Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. -Gertrude Stein
Men have become the tools of their tools. -Henry David Thoreau
Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. -Phillip K. Dick
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. -William Blake
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. -Henry David Thoreau
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. -Anaïs Nin
The secret of joy is the mastery of pain. -Anaïs Nin
A good composer does not imitate; he steals. -Igor Stravinksy
The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost. -William Carlos Williams
As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality — where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power. -Friedrich Nietzsche
People only see what they are prepared to see. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love demands infinitely less than friendship. -George Jean Nathan
Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution. -Karl Kraus
We haven’t failed. We now know a thousand things that won’t work, so we are much closer to finding what will. -Thomas Edison
For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable. -Walt Whitman
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. -William Blake
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. -Hamlet
It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance. -Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. -G.K. Chesterton
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care. -William Safire
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. -H. L. Mencken
Maps encourage boldness. They’re like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible. -Mark Jenkins
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. -Michel de Montaigne
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot. -D. H. Lawrence
But pain… seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?” -Lois McMaster Bujold
“We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” -Will Rogers
“The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.” -Charles Luckman
“It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.” -Robert Anton Wilson
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.” -Aung San Suu Kyi
“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” -Bob Dylan
“Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.” -Andre Gide
“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.” -Charlie Chaplin
“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.” -Quentin Crisp
“Love is not blind – it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” -Rabbi Julius Gordon
“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.” -Jerry Seinfeld
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” -Ursula K. LeGuin
“There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.” -Jane Austen
“Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.” -Thomas Hobbes
“The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.” -Evenius
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.” -Margaret Fuller
“Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony.” -Seneca
“Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.” -Barbara Mikkelson
“Only sick music makes money today.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
“When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.” -Anatole France
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” -Sir Winston Churchill
“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” –James Earl Jones
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
“Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.” -Alberto Giacometti
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” -Bertrand Russell “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” -Jonathan Swift
“The obvious is always least understood.” -Klemens von Metternich
“Time makes more converts than reason.” -Tom Paine
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“It is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave.” -Homer
“Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.” -Richard M. Nixon
“I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.” -Socrates
“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
“A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.” -Saki
“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.” -Paul Fix
“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.” -Harry S Truman
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -Carl Jung
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. -Henry Ford
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. -Philip K. Dick
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. -Aesop
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. -James Thurber
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. -Thomas Jefferson
Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it. -Cicero
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. -John Locke
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. -Martin Luther King Jr.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy. -Sarah Ban Breathnach
A full cup must be carried steadily. -English Proverb
The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish. -Henrik Ibsen
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. -Simone Weil
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. -Niels Bohr
Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts. -Saki
After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood. -Fred Thompson
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought. -John Kenneth Galbraith
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