quotes blog

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

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel but being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy rich, not gaudy For the apparel oft proclaims the man. - William Shakespeare

Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. - Ludwig van Beethoven

Music, verily, is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life… the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. - Ludwig van Beethoven

Music–the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge, which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend. - Ludwig van Beethoven

All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players.They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. - William Shakespeare

Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in. - Aesop

George It was the greatest feeling I ever had. Followed abruptly by the worst feeling I ever had. - Blow

On CBS Radio the news of his Ed Murrow’s death, reportedly from lung cancer, was followed by a cigarette commercial. - Alexander Kendrick

When you helped somebody, right away you were responsible for that person. And things always followed for which you were never prepared. - Martha Brooks, True Confessions of a Heartless Girl

Nurture an appetite for being puzzled, for being confused, indeed for being openly stupid, and that - despite what you may think - is very difficult…We all know the cliche’ that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also true that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing as well…use your ignorance as well as your knowledge for creative means. - Lee C. Bollinger

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly. . . spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order. - Susan Taylor

Admonish thy friends in secret, praise them openly. - Publilius Syrus

What I am is good enough if I could only be it openly. - Carl R. Rogers

Whatever is to make us better and happy, God has placed either openly before us or close to us. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity. - Seneca

Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality. - George Bernard Shaw

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life. - Germaine Greer

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen that is the common right of humanity. - Seneca

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. - Mark Twain

We must not be hampered by yesterday’s myths in concentrating on today’s needs. - Harold S. Geneen

There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. - Franklin P. Adams

From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents.
From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks.
From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality.
From fifty-five on, she needs good cash. - Sophie Tucker

A cold needs the cook as much as the doctor. - Scottish Proverb

It’s just human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we’re all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. it’s like a kind of poetry. - Andrew Schneider

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, ‘Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday’ - Michel MacLiammir

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. - Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in March 1946

When the tea is brought at five o’clock And all the neat curtains are drawn with care, The little black cat with bright green eyes Is suddenly purring there. - Harold Monro

As the moon retaineth her nature, though darkness spread itself before her face as a curtain, so the Soul remaineth perfect even in the bosom of the fool. - Akhenaton

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this - when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters - when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day - and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past! - Lewis Carroll

From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard. - Dwight D Eisenhower

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. - Robert F. Kennedy, 1966 speech

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, his next to escape the censures of the world. - English Proverb

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. - Joseph Addison

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgement. - William Shakespeare

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel but being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy rich, not gaudy For the apparel oft proclaims the man. - William Shakespeare

I won’t have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble in Parliament you run over here with your shirttail hanging out. (To Prime Minister Harold Wilson) - Lyndon B. Johnson

Alcohol is a very necessary article… It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning. - George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (1907) act 2

Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties. - George Bernard Shaw

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic. - Sir Winston Churchill

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder. (To Canadian Parliament) - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

In Britain, the segregated world of public schools crops up in all kinds of institutions A boy can pass from Eton to the Guards to the Middle Temple to Parliament and still retain the same male world of leather armchairs, teak tables and nicknames. They need never deal closely with other kinds of people, and some never do. - Anthony Sampson

If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable. - Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. - Jose Ortega y Gasset

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school. - Albert Einstein

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. - W. H. Auden

Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them. - Evan Esar

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts–the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. - John Ruskin

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. - Marian Evans

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds. - Buddha

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination. - Ovid

The truly skillful politician is one who, when he comes to a fork in the road, goes both ways. - Marco A. Almazan

Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias. - Bertrand Russell

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
but when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable. - Sophocles, Creusa

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. - Tom Bodett

Europe is spreading its wings. In freedom. In prosperity. And in peace. It is a truly proud moment for the European Union. It is a triumph for liberty and democracy. To our new members I say: ?Warmly welcome to our family?. Our new Europe is born. - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, (Prime Minister of Denmark) Family photo after the European Council meeting in Copenhagen, 13 December 20

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

In your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go and sheltered so may thrive and grow. - Louise Driscoll

What feeling is so nice as a child’s hand in yours So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp. - Marjorie Holmes

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it. - H. L. Mencken

This is something that I cherish. Once in a friend’s home I came across this blessing, and took it down in shorthand … it says something I like to live with Oh Thou, who dwellest in so many homes, possess Thyself of this. Bless the life that is sheltered here. Grant that trust and peace and comfort abide within, and that love and life and usefulness may go out from this home forever. - Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. - Barbara Tuchman

He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed. - Confucius, The Confucian Analects

All general statements are false. - Unknown, The Ultimate Law

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most profound statements are often said in silence. - Lynn Johnston, For Better or For Worse, 01-15-04

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. - John Von Neumann (ca. 1949)

I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made. - Dan Quayle

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. - Henry David Thoreau

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come. - Rabindranath Tagore

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this - when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters - when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day - and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past! - Lewis Carroll

The Darkness has begun. There will be no dawn. - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Chapter 1

It is the darkest hour before dawn. - Unknown

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. - Kahlil Gibran