The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make Heaven of Hell, and a
Hell of Heaven. -John Milton
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things
in the face and know them for what they are. -Marcus Aurelius
Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.
-Euripides
Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized
anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts:
therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions
unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. -Marcus Aurelius
I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketfull of mumbles
Such are promises. All lies in jest
'till a man hears what he wants to and disregards the rest -Paul Simon
In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second listening, the
third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth -- teaching others. -Ibn
Gabirol
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You
may both be wrong. -Dandemis
Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice. -George Jackson
I would hope that you would know when to let go of those things that do not serve you, but force you to serve them.
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire
- then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. -Robert Fulghum
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just
persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. -Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we
can find information upon it. -Samuel Johnson
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing
it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. -Buddha
I know of no other single thing so conducive to misery as this uncultivated, untrained mind. -Buddha
I know of no other single thing so conducive to well-being as this cultivated and well-trained mind. -Buddha
There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top
problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost
long ago.-J. Robert Oppenheimer
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to
become what they are capable of being.-Johann von Goethe
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we
have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people
by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what
you know is wrong. -William J. H. Boetcker
I care not for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it.
-Abraham Lincoln
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
regard those who think alike than those who think differently. -Nietzche
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. -Shakespeare
Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly
level. -Max L. Forman
The world is a comedy for those that think, a tragedy for those that feel.
-Horace Walpole
If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right
words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and
effectually within their minds. -J.B. Phillips
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right
place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.-Dorothy
Nevill
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long
at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
-Helen Keller
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on
the things you have long taken for granted. -Bertrand Russell
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a
sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all
times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall
pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How
consoling in the depths of affliction! -Abraham Lincoln
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an
arrested intellectual development. - Oscar Wilde - Phrases and Philosophies for
the Use of the Young
The only limits are, as always, those of vision. -James Broughton
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what
their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day
toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose. -Brian Tracy
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
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to
grow sharper. -Eden Phillpotts
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important
than any other one thing. -Abraham Lincoln
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, American newspaper editor, writer
The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with
language. -J. Michael Straczynski
If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life
should be, then maturity is letting go again. -Mary Beth Danielson
There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do
what they are told, and those who can do nothing else. -Cyrus Curtis
Political language--and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure
wind. -George Orwell
Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if
no birds sang except the best. -Henry Van Dyke
It's easy to get buried in the past/When you try to make a good thing last. -Neil Young Ambulance Blues
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime;
Therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history
Therefore we must be saved by faith
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
Therefore we are saved by love
-Reinhold Niebuhr
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the
only cash you have. Spend it wisely.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing
himself. -Leo Tolstoy
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I
live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. -George Bernard Shaw
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your
energies on a limited set of targets.-Nido Qubein
You must be single minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have
decided.-George S. Patton
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away
from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be
taken too seriously. -Samuel Butler
The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest
willing to let them. -Robert Frost
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want
them to become politicians in the process. -John F. Kennedy
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all
doubt. -Abraham Lincoln
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and
write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -Alvin Toffler
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much
you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you
don't. -Anatole France
When we ask advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice. -Marquis de la
Grange
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
-Bernard Berenson
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
-Sir. Winston Churchill
The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than
a 'C,' the idea must be feasible. -A Yale University management professor in
response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken.
-Orson Rega Card
Remember, life is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens
to you. Everyone dies, but not everyone fully lives. Too many people are having
"near-life" experiences.
It takes only one person to change your life --you. -Ruth Casey
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live
for. -Dostoyevsky
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
-Seneca
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality
that most frequently makes for success. -Dale Carnegie
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
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what
harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. -Seneca
Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves
must pass. -Confucius
It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our
power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. -C.W.
Leadbeater
Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. -James Dean
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in
pursuit. -Gaius Plinius
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by
rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in
doubtful cases, though not often. -Samuel Butler
Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if
we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it
with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible
authority of this lies in our wills. -William Shakespeare, from Othello: Act I,
Scene III
Eyes are vocal, tears have tongues, and there are words not made with lungs.
-Crashaw
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at
play. -Heraclitus
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how
enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. -Soren Kierkegaard
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine
picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate
the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. -Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what
they do not want to hear. -George Orwell
There are only two enterprises that refer to their customers as users, and
one is illegal. -Michael Hammer
The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool. -William McFee
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to
supply light and not heat. -Woodrow Wilson
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
-Josh Billings
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim
above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. -Henry David Thoreau
To see things in the seed, that is genius. -Lao-tzu
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
-Abraham Lincoln
Nothing overshadows truth so completely as authority. -Alberti
The first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the
gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right. -Cato the
Younger
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
There are no facts, only interpretations. -Friedrich Nietzsche
Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
-Leo Tolstoy
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of
human existence. -Aristotle
One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of
Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
-Morihei Ueshiba
He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature...is less
liable than anyone else to miss and waste life. -Henri Frederic Amiel
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
-Pablo Picasso
May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, the sun
shine warm upon your face, the rain fall soft upon your fields, and until we
meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand. - Irish Toast
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a
nail.-Abraham Maslow
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought. -Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
-Frederick Langbridge
Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it. -Irving
Berlin
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because
thorns have roses. -Tom Wilson
We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
-Samuel Johnson
Reason also is a choice. -Milton, Paradise Lost
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; in disobeying the
latter we are made unhappy, in disobeying the former, fools. -Pascal, Pensees
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury
that provokes it. -Seneca
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that
uses it. -Rabindranath Tagore
Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids
earn what they get, and that includes respect. -Woody Hayes
I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you
respect me as a human being. -Jackie Robinson "I Never Had It Made,"
1972
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by
assimilation than by friction. - Heinrich Heine
Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience. -George-Louis Leclerc de
Buffon
It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of
greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases. -Johan
Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth. -George Prentice
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.
-Kahlil Gibran
I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. -Mark
Twain
Perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries is not the goal but the
exercise.-Anmar Mirza
Just as white light consists of colored rays, so Reverence for Life contains
all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy,
peacefulness, power to forgive. -Albert Schweitzer
Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine
equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thine superiors thou
shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse;
the best means to grow better is to be the worst there. -Francis Quarles
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
-Cicero
There are two kinds of light-the glow that illumines, and the glare that
obscures. -James Thurber
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, 'Make me feel
important.' Never forget this message when working with people. -Mary Kay
Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds -
all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have. -Edward
Everett Hale
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he
resents.-G. C. Lichtenberg
Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time
subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical
scrutiny. Be aware of human
fallibility. Cherish your species and
your planet. -Carl Sagan
Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling
our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions. -John F.
Kennedy
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. -Victor
Hugo
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold.
For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to
hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great
wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. -Leonardo daVinci
Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact,
it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self
esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize
and appreciate himself as part of this worlds marvels. -Rabino Nilton Bonder
When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine
ourselves. -Confucius
If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than
contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must
leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we
got through with it. -President Lyndon B. Johnson
Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power
without humor. -Eric Sevareid
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are
ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we
have gone ourselves. -E. M. Forster
Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the
deeper it sinks into the mind. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
writing a book. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted;
the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the
voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to
triumph. -Haile Selassie
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends
or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for
thee. -John Donne
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can
by what others say about him. -Leo Aikman
The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No
matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you
die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have
lived. -Gilda Radner
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The best vitamin for making friends, B-1.
We can use words, but in the end deeds are what counts.-Australian Prime
Minister John Howard
The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
-Mohammad
Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stilled only
by non-hatred -- this is the law Eternal. -Buddha
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup
of bitterness and hatred. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life is a long lesson in humility. -James M. Barrie
Sometimes to remain silent is to lie. -Miguel de Unamuno
We should measure affection, not like youngsters by the ardour of its
passion, but by its strength and constancy. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his
enemies, for the hardest victory is over self. -Aristotle
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from
themselves. -James Matthew Barrie
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest. -Confucius
Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big,worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe. -Robert Service
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
- Ray Bradbury
No one keeps his enthusiasm automaticalty. Enthusiasm must be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, new efforts, new vision. - Papyrus
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain. - Norman Mailer
Believe those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide
Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. - Confuscious
People say life begins at conception. I say life began about a billion years ago and it's a continuous process. - George Carlin
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. - George Orwell
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." -- James Madison
The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous
stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded.
Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened
, seem never to have been quite real. -General Douglas MacArthur
On quotes and slogans ...
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
A quote falsely and widely attributed to Edmund Burke.
Martin Porter on the above:
... The pseudo-quote is therefore without authenticity or meaning, and is just another of those political slogans which are
used not as an assistance to, but as a substitute for real thought. It is not a deep truth, although it is
constantly treated as one. Burke incidentally hated such things. He thought that cheap political slogans,
or "maxims" as he called them, enabled politicians to invoke principles of expediency, so they could pursue their own selfish interests instead of fulfilling their obligations to country, party and people. To
him they were quite distinct from the deeps truths, or as he calls them here, "first principles",
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a
cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper
coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful
to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which
many people get loose from every honourable engagement. -Edmund Burke
Beware the short, pithy slogan, think and have principles. Keep things in perspective.