quotes blog

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

I pray you bear me henceforth from the noise and rumour of the field, where I may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part of this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires. - William Shakespeare

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms–this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men. - Albert Einstein

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Grown ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The Little Prince”, 1943

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

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting himself and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary while the greater ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. - Ashley Montagu

A ragged colt may prove a good horse. And so may an untoward slovenly boy prove a decent and useful man. - James Kelly

Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest. - Bion

Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. - James Grover Thurber

A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think he does, and about two years after he thinks he does. - Lewis Blaine Hershey

Shouldn’t someone tag Mr Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with its proper age Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother. - Ronald Reagan

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. - Heraclitus, On the Universe

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current… Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success. - Albert Pike

Enough shovels of earth ……………………..a mountain. Enough pails of water ………………………….a river. - Chinese Proverb

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. - Heraclitus of Ephesus

Lakes, rivers, streams…all are water and all travel to the same destination. So it is with religion. - Muhammed Ali, in a television interview

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true Cling to it long enough, and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. - Robert Frost

It?s a wonder I haven?t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. - Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, July 15, 1944

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forgot this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and there freedoms. - Robert Heinlein

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. - George Lucas

Have you ever seen an inchworm crawl up a leaf or a twig, and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something, to reach something That’s like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have footing. - Albert P. Ryder

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper. - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. - Samuel Ullman

The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come. - James Whitcomb Riley

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. - Arnold J. Toynbee

Golf is very much like a love affair, if you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun, if you do, it breaks your heart. Don’t break your heart, but flirt with the possibility. - Louise Suggs

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. - Will Rogers, Illiterate Digest (1924), “Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes”

Golf is a good walk, ruined. - Mark Twain

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God-the rest will be given. - Mother Theresa

I love cats. I love their grace and their elegance. I love their independence and their arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare. - Joyce Stranger

Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that 10,000 men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them? - Benjamin Franklin

Instead of raising your hand to ask a question in class, how about individual push buttons on each desk That way, when you want to ask a question, you just push the button and it lights up a corresponding number on a tote board at the front of the class. Then all the professor has to do is check the lighted number against a master sheet of names and numbers to see who is asking the question. - Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now. — (Comment made 10 April 1962 in reaction to news that U.S. Steel was raising prices by $6 per ton, right after the unions negotiated a modest new contract under pressure from JFK to keep inflation down.) - John F. Kennedy, “A Thousand Days,” by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [1965]

Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives. Unfortunately most of us are completely unaware of this fact and we do not monitor our thoughts with the care needed so that we can create in our lives the results we say we want. Since the great majority of people do not feel worthy and deserving of abundant good fortune, radiant good health and total success in all areas of their lives that overriding thought pattern controls the results people get. The first order of business of anyone who wants to enjoy success in all areas of his
her life is to take charge of the internal dialogue they have and only think, say and behavior in a manner consistent with the results they truly desire. - Sidney Madwed

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. So to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that which is impenetretrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness. - Albert Einstein

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms–this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men. - Albert Einstein

During these periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight. - Fritjof Capra

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it. - Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus

During [these] periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight. - Fritjof Capra, physicist

The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end. - Saint Jerome, Letter 48

Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves. - Thomas S. Szasz

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion. - Robert Chapman

Disgust with dirt can be so great that it prevents us from cleaning ourselves - from “justifying” ourselves. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Aphorisms in Beyond Good and Evil

Virtue extends our days: he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure. - Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams

Persons who have no desire to live have a very slight chance of recovery. We can continue to extend to them our love, sympathy, and prayers but ultimately we must respect a person’s decision to die. - Michio Kushi

The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man. - Confucius, The Confucian Analects

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. - Jacob Chanowski

I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one’s existence. I don’t want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. - Theodore Roosevelt

Studies indicate that the one quality all successful people have is persistence. They’re willing to spend more time accomplishing a task and to perservere in the face of many difficult odds. There’s a very positive relationship between people’s ability to accomplish any task and the time they’re willing to spend on it. - Joyce

The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others. - William Lyon Phelps

‘What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations’ - Lewis Carroll

Take Nothing but Pictures.
Leave nothing but footprints.
Kill nothing but time. - Motto of the Baltimore Grotto (caving society)

…all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and (there is) no cause to value one above the other.” - H.P. Lovecraft

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. - Samuel Butler

At the bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. - Friedrich Nietzsche

No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you’d be more productive. - Joyce Brothers

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. - Ayn Rand

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet. - Michael J. Gelb

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin impatience. Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise because of impatience we cannot return. - Franz Kafka

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. - Franz Kafka

Everyone, whether cardinal or scientist, who believes that his own truth is complete and final must become a dogmatist…The more sincere his faith, the more he is bound to persecute, to save others from falling into error. - Joyce

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. - Thomas Hobbes, quoted from “Oxygen3, Panda Software

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring Impatience and Laziness. - Franz Kafka

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to … the American people Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. (On the Vietnam War) - Richard Milhous Nixon

Faith–is the Pierless Bridge Supporting what We see Unto the Scene that We do not. - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them. - Harold S. Geneen

If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you but if not, you have infinite power against you. - Charles Gordon

If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you; but if not, you have infinite power against you. - Charles Gordon

It was a dark and stormy night the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford

Now begins a torrent of words and a trickling of sense. - Theocritus of Chios

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards. - Lois McMaster Bujold, “A Civil Campaign”, 1999

Don’t let the bastards grind you down. - Gen. Joseph Stilwell

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards. - R. A. Dickson

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country. - General George Patton

The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards - Alexander Jablokov “The Place of No Shadows”

Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison. - Clive Lewis

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul unbelief, in denying them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything. - Thomas Huxley

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation. - Gail Sheehy

The secret of all success is to know how to deny yourself. Prove that you can control yourself, and you are an educated man and without this all other education is good for nothing. - R. D. Hitchcock

Talent hits a target no one else can hit Genius hits a target no one else can see. - Arthur Schopenhauer

In Kyudo philosophy, you don’t aim–you become one with the target. Then, in fact, there’s nothing to aim at. I find it works well with women, too. Give it a try. - Sybil Adelman

Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets. - Nido Qubein

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. - Arthur Schopenhauer

For target shooting, that’s okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the home, that’s why we have police departments. - James Brady

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. - Albert Einstein

Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious. - Unknown

Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. - Albert Einstein

The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. - Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. - Brendan Gill

Even the longest hours come to an end. - Jose Raul Bernardo, Silent Wing (Simon & Schuster, 1998) One of the Best Novels of 1998 (LA Times)

I have learned this at least by my experiment that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness. - James Thurber

Every morning you are handed 24 golden hours. They are one of the few things in this world that you get free of charge. If you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t buy an extra hour. What will you do with this priceless treasure Remember, you must use it, as it is given only once. Once wasted you cannot get it back. - Unknown

Trent Let me tell you something Mike your money, and you know what else, your a big winner. I’m gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me who’s the big winner here tonight at the casino Huh Mikey, that’s who. Mikey’s the big winner. Mikey wins. - Swingers

Ace Running a casino is like robbing a bank with no cops around. For guys like me, Las Vegas washes away your sins. It’s like a morality car wash. - Casino

Ace The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior’s college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it’s like checkin’ into an airport. And if you order room service, you’re lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it’s all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids Junk bonds. But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And why mess up a good thing - Casino

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within. - Alfred Tennyson

Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts. - Saki

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution. - Niccolo Machiavelli

But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God. - Socrates, Apology, (Plato)

…exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fulness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity. - Gustave Flaubert, “Madame Bovary”, ch. 12

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. - Thomas J. Watson

Jesus was a crackpot. - Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh - San Francisco Chronicle 12/17/85

Neither a borrower nor a lender be For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. - William Shakespeare

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. - Frank Leahy

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. - William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”, Act 1 scene 3

Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. - Abraham Lincoln

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. - Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”, 1854

Religiously strict people, who judge themselves without mercy, are also those who have most often spoken ill of mankind in general. - Frederick Nietzsche

To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself. - Bernard Iddings Bell

For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. - George Orwell

Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. - Bertrand Russell

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics. - Newt Gingrich

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. - Henry Miller

“Do you know what a pessimist is?” “A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” - George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (1887) ch. 5