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Famous Quotes

2008-07-20T04:55:00.001-07:00

Abraham Lincoln Quotes
Albert Einstein Quotes
Aristotle Quotes
Ambrose Bierce Quotes
Benjamin Disraeli Quotes
Benjamin Franklin Quotes
Carl Sandburg Quotes
C. S. Lewis Quotes
Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes
Francis Bacon Quotes
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
George Bernard Shaw Quotes
George Eliot Quotes
George Will Quotes
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
H. L. Mencken Quotes
John F. Kennedy
Lord Byron Quotes
Mark Twain
Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
Maya Angelou Quotes
Mohandas Gandhi Quotes
Mother Teresa Quotes
Muhammad Ali Quotes
Nelson Mandela Quotes
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Ronald Reagan Quotes
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Steven Wright Quotes
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes
Thomas Carlyle Quotes
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Vince Lombardi Quotes
Virgil Quotes
Voltaire Quotes
William Shakespeare Quotes
Winston Churchill Quotes

Last Words From Famous People

2008-07-20T04:51:00.001-07:00

Deathbed statements, last words, uttered by a number of famous people

Adams, John (1735-1826) "Thomas Jefferson--still survives..." (4 July 1826. Jefferson died on the same day.)

Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848) "This is the last of earth! I am content."

Addison, Joseph (1672-1719) "See in what peace a Christian can die."

Akiba ben Joseph (c.40-c.135) "The paper burns, but the words fly free." (at the stake, when the Torah was also burned.)

Antoinette, Marie (1755-1793) "Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your Father."

Astor, Lady Nancy (1879-1964) "Jakie, is it my birthday or am I dying?" (Seeing all her children assembled at her bedside in her last illness.)

Baer, Max (1909-1959) [American boxer, Heavyweight Champion 1934-5] "Oh God, here I go..."

Barrymore, John (1882-1942) Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.

Bass, Sam (1851-1878) [Texas Outlaw] "Let me go - The world is bobbing around me." (Also reported as "The room is jumping up and down" and "The world is a bubble - trouble wherever you go".)

Beaverbrook, Lord (1879-1964) "This is my final word. It is time for me to become an apprentice once more. I have not settled in which direction. But somewhere, sometime, soon." (The last public statement before his death, speech at Dorchester Hotel, 25 May 1964)

Beck, Martha ( -1951) [American murderess] "My story is a love story, but only those who are tortured by love can understand what I mean. I was pictured as a fat, unfeeling woman. True, I am fat, but if that is a crime, how many of my sex are guilty. I am not unfeeling, stupid or moronic. My last words and my last thoughts are: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." (Before her execution.)

Becket, Thomas (c.1119-1179) "I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace." (One version of his last words.)

Beecher, Henry Ward (1813-1887) "Now comes the mystery."

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827) "Friends applaud, the comedy is over." Beethoven's publisher's web site (www.schott-music.com) claims his secretary wrote that he said "Pity, Pity - too late!"

Bevan, Aneurin (1897-1960) "I want to live because there are a few things I want to do." (During his last illness.)

Bogart, Humphrey (1899-1957) "I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis." (Unverified -- attributed.) (A recent television biography of Bogart includes Lauren Bacall, his wife, saying that he was at home bedridden with cancer when she left the house briefly, maybe to do grocery shopping. "Hurry back", he said as she closed the door. When she returned he was dead.)

Brown, James (1933-2006) "I'm going away tonight." (Reported by his personal manager, Charles Bobbit, who said he was at Brown's bedside when he died, and added that Brown said the statement above, then took three long, quiet breaths, and closed his eyes.)

Bouhours, Dominique [French grammarian] "I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used."

Burbank, Luther (1849-1926) "I don't feel good."

Byron, Lord (1788-1824) "Goodnight."

Cavell, Edith Louisa (1865-1915) "Standing, as I do, in the view of God and eternity I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." (To the chaplain who attended her before her execution by the Germans, 12 October 1915)

Chaplin, Charles (1889-1977) When the priest who was attending him at his bedsite said "May the Lord have mercy on your soul", Chaplin is reported to have replied "Why Not? After all, it belongs to him."

Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1600-1649) "Stay for the sign." (After the English Civil War, Charles was tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. His last words were spoken to the executioner, waiting to behead him. He asked if he might be given a moment to pray, and then, when he gave the sign, the ax could fall.)

Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1630-1685) "I have been a most unconscionable time dying, but I beg you to excuse it." (Following the death of Cromwell, Charles I's son became King when the Stuarts were restored to the throne. Arts and Literatire thrived; Charles II was known as "The Merry Monarch".)

Childers, Robert Erskins (1870-1922) (Irish Nationalist, executed by an Irish Free State firing squad) "Take a step forward, lads. It will be easier that way."

Claudel, Paul (1868-1955) "Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?"

Cleveland, Grover (1837-1908) "I have tried so hard to do the right."

Costello, Lou (1906-1959) "That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted."

Coward, Noel (1899-1973) "Goodnight my darlings, I'll see you tomorrow." (On going to bed.)

Coy, Bernard ( -1946) [American criminal] "It don't matter; I figure I licked the Rock anyway." (After he was shot down attempting to escape from Alcatraz Prison)

Crane, Hart (1899-1932) "Goodbye, Everybody!" (Said when he committed suicide by jumping overboard during a steamship voyage.)

Crosby, Bing (1903-1977) "That was a great game of golf, fellers."

Crowley, Francis "Two Gun" (1900-1931) (American bank robber and murderer, before his execution in the electric chair) "You sons of bitches. Give my love to Mother."

Czolgosz, Leon (1873-1902) "I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people, the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime." (Before his execution for the assassination of William McKinley.)

Danton, Georges-Jacques (1759-1794) "Thou wilt show my head to the people; it is worth showing." (To his executioner, 5 April 1794)

Dean, James (1931-1955) "My fun days are over." (Shortly before his fatal car crash.)

Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886) "... the fog is rising."

Eastman, George (1854-1932) "My work is done, why wait?" (His suicide note.)

Fillmore, Millard (1800-1874) "The nourishment is palatable."

Flynn, Errol (1909-1959) "I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it." (Said shortly before his death.)

Fox, Charles James (1749-1806) "I die happy."

Gainsborough, Thomas (1727-1788) "We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyke is of the company." (Attributed last words.)

Gandhi, Indira (1917-1984) "I don't mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die today every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation." (Said the night before she was assassinated by Sikh militants.)

Goldman, Charley ( -1970) [American boxing manager] "Only suckers get hit with right hands."

Gwenn, Edmund (1875-1959) "It is. But not as hard as farce." in _Time_ 30 January 1984 (On his deathbed, in reply to the comment `It must be very hard.')

Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856) "Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son metier." [God will pardon me. It is his trade.] (On his deathbed.)

Henry, O. (1862-1910) "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." (Quoting a popular song, 5 June 1910)

Housman, A. E. (1859-1936) "That is indeed very good. I shall have to repeat that on the Golden Floor!" (To his doctor, who told him a joke just before he died.)

Hubbock, Chris "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first--an attempted suicide." (just before she shot herself during a broadcast)

Huss, John (c.1369-1415) "O sancta simplicitas! [O holy simplicity!]" (On noticing a peasant adding a faggot to the pile at his execution.)

Jackson, Thomas Jonathan `Stonewall' (1824-1863) "Let us pass over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." (He had been inadvertedly shot by his own men.)

Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826) "Is it the Fourth?" (4 July 1826)

Jolson, Al (1886-1950) "This is it. I'm going. I'm going."

Kelly, Ned (1854-1880) [Australian folk hero and outlaw and legend]. "I suppose it had to come to this. Such is life." (As the hangman adjusted the hood to cover his face.)

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963) "If someone is going to kill me, they will kill me." (On arriving in Dallas, 1963)

Keynes, John Maynard (1883-1946) "I wish I'd drunk more champagne."

Lee, Robert Edward (1807-1870) "Strike the tent."

Lehar, Franz (1870-1948) "Now I have finished with all earthly business, and high time too. Yes, yes, my dear child, now comes death."

Lewis, Wyndham (1884-1957) "Mind your own business." (When his nurse asked him about the state of his bowels on his deathbed.)

Louis XIV (1638-1715) "Why are you weeping? Did you imagine that I was immortal?" (Noticing as he lay on his deathbed that his attendants were crying.)

Malcolm X (1925-1965) "Cool it, brothers..." (His last words before being assassinated.)

Marx, Karl (1818-1883) "Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough."

McLain, James ( -1970) [American criminal] "Take lots of pictures! We are the revolutionaries!" (Before being killed by the police, as he tried to shoot his way to freedom at his trial.)

Morant, Lt. Henry H. ("Breaker")(b. Edwin Henry Murrant) (1864-1902) [Australian Anglo-Boer War soldier and poet] "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!" (To the firing squad that executed him.)

Morgan, John Pierpont (1837-1913) "I've got to get to the top of the hill..."

Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945) "But, but, mister Colonel..." (Before being executed.)

Napoleon I (1769-1821) "Chief of the Army."

Narvaez, Ramon Maria (1800-1868) "I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." (Said on his deathbed, when asked by a priest if he forgave his enemies.)

Oates, Lawrence (1880-1912) "I am just going outside and may be some time." (Before leaving the tent and vanishing into the blizzard on the ill-fated Antarctic expedition (1910-1912). Oates was afraid that his lameness would slow down the others.)

Olivier, Laurence (1907-1989) "This isn't Hamlet, you know, it's not meant to go into the bloody ear." (To his nurse, who spilt water over him while trying to moisten his lips.)

Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount (1784-1865) "Die, my dear Doctor? That's the last thing I shall do!" (Attributed last words.)

Philby, St John ( -1960) "God, I'm bored."

Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973) "Drink to me."

Presley, Elvis (1935-1977) "I hope I haven't bored you." (Concluding what would be his last press conference.)

Raleigh, Sir Walter (1554-1618) "I have a long journey to take, and must bid the company farewell."

Rhodes, Cecil John (1853-1902) "So little done, so much to do."

Rodgers, James W. ( -1960) [American criminal] "Why yes, a bulletproof vest!" (On his final request before the firing squad.)

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945) "I have a terrific headache."

Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919) "Put out the light."

Rosenberg, Ethel (1918-1953) "We are the first victims of American fascism!" (Before her execution.)

Rosenberg, Julius (1918-1953) "We are innocent. That is the whole truth. To forsake this truth is to pay too high a price even for the priceless gift of life. For life thus purchased we could not live out in dignity." (Before his execution.)

Runyon, Damon (1884-1946) "You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year."

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (1870-1916) "Put that bloody cigarette out." (Just before being killed by a sniper, 14 November 1916)

Sanders, George (1906-1972) "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries. Good luck." (His suicide note.)

Sedgwick, John (1813-1864) "Nonsense, they couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." (In response to a suggestion that he should not show himself over the parapet during the Battle of the Wilderness.)

Senna (Da Silva), Ayrton (1960-1994) [Formula One Race Driver] "The car seems OK..." [A few seconds later his steering column broke and he died when his car hit the wall.]

Shaw, George Bernard (1856-1950) "I want to sleep..."

Smith, Adam (1723-1790) "I believe we should adjourn this meeting to another place."

Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946) "Just before she [Stein] died she asked, `What _is_ the answer?' No answer came. She laughed and said, `In that case what is the question?' Then she died."

Stevenson, Adlai E. (1900-1965) "I feel faint." (Before collapsing.)

Thomas, Dylan (1914-1953) "I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record."

Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)
`Have you made your peace with your God?'
`I never quarreled with my God.'
`But aren't you concerned about the next world?'
`One world at a time.'
(Discussion with his aunt on his deathbed)

Thurber, James (1894-1961) "God bless... God damn."

Villa, Francisco `Pancho' (1878-1923) "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

Voltaire (1694-1778) "This is no time to make new enemies." (When asked on his deathbed to forswear Satan.)

Wallace, William (1270-1305, Scottish Patriot) "Freedom" [Ascribed to him in the film "Braveheart"; his actual last words, before being hanged, disembowelled, drawn and quartered, are unknown.]

Washington, George (1732-1799) "It is well, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go."

Webster, Daniel (1782-1852) "I still live."

Wells, Herbert George (1866-1946) "Go away... I'm allright."

Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900) "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do!" [The authenticity of this quote is complicated by his deathbed conversion back to Catholicism and the fact that a priest was with him up to the very end. Another deathbed quotation is also attributed to him: he asked for Champagne to sip as he died, and as he sipped, he is reported to have said: "Alas, I am dying beyond my means."]

Winston Churchill Quotes

2008-07-19T09:54:00.001-07:00

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

A joke is a very serious thing.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

History is written by the victors.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

I am bored with it all.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

I like a man who grins when he fights.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.

I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations... The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Most people stumble over the truth, now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Never, never, never give up.

"No comment" is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

One does not leave a convivial party before closing time.

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The first quality that is needed is audacity.

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy's aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

There is no such thing as a good tax.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.

These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

William Shakespeare Quotes

2008-07-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

A friend i'the court is better than a penny in purse.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.

Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment.

Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!

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.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

Boldness be my friend.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.

By that sin fell the angels.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Death is a fearful thing.

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

Everyone ought to bear patiently the results of his own conduct.

Exceeds man's might: that dwells with the gods above.

Expectation is the root of all heartache.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Farewell, fair cruelty.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

For my part, it was Greek to me.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o' the flatterer.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good dead in a naughty world.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

I bear a charmed life.

I dote on his very absence.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

I like not fair terms and a villain's mind.

I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

I was adored once too.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

I will praise any man that will praise me.

If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.

If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die.

If music be the food of love, play on.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottage princes' palaces.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

In a false quarrel there is no true valor.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

Let no such man be trusted.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.

Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

Men's vows are women's traitors!

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.

O, had I but followed the arts!

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

O' What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

Praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Speak low, if you speak love.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.

Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart.

The attempt and not the deed confounds us.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

The golden age is before us, not behind us.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

The object of art is to give life a shape.

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.

The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

The wheel is come full circle.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

There's many a man has more hair than wit.

There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

There's place and means for every man alive.

They do not love that do not show their love.

They say miracles are past.

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

'Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from... Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

What is past is prologue.

What, man, defy the devil. Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.

What's done can't be undone.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

Women may fall when there's no strength in men.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Voltaire Quotes

2008-07-19T09:51:00.001-07:00

A witty saying proves nothing.

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

Better is the enemy of good.

Business is the salt of life.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Common sense is not so common.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

History should be written as philosophy.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Ice-cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

My life is a struggle.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

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

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

The best is the enemy of the good.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.

The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.

Virgil Quotes

2008-07-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

A fault is fostered by concealment.

Age carries all things away, even the mind.

Age steals away all things, even the mind.

All our sweetest hours fly fastest.

All things deteriorate in time.

As the twig is bent the tree inclines.

Better times perhaps await us who are now wretched.

But meanwhile time flies; it flies never to be regained.

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.

Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.

Confidence cannot find a place wherein to rest in safety.

Consider what each soil will bear, and what each refuses.

Do not yield to misfortunes, but advance more boldly to meet them, as your fortune permits you.

Each of us bears his own Hell.

Endure the present, and watch for better things.

Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person.

Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.

Every man makes a god of his own desire.

Every sound alarms.

Fate will find a way.

Fear is proof of a degenerate mind.

Fortune favors the bold.

Fortune favours the bold.

Fortune sides with him who dares.

From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods.

From one learn all.

Fury itself supplies arms.

Go forth a conqueror and win great victories.

Happy is he who can trace effects to their causes.

Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things.

He enters the port with a full sail.

He like a rock in the sea unshaken stands his ground.

Hug the shore; let others try the deep.

I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.

I shudder when relating it.

If one swain scorns you, you will soon find another.

If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong.

In strife who inquires whether stratagem or courage was used?

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be.

Let not our proposal be disregarded on the score of our youth.

Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is same for all.

Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love.

Love conquers all.

Mind moves matter.

Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate.

None but himself can be his parallel.

O accursed hunger of gold, to what dost thou not compel human hearts!

One man excels in eloquence, another in arms.

Passion and strife bow down the mind.

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.

Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy.

Persevere and preserve yourselves for better circumstances.

The descent to the infernal regions is easy enough, but to retrace one's steps, and reach the air above, there's the rub.

The medicine increases the disease.

The only safety for the conquered is to expect no safety.

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.

Their rage supplies them with weapons.

There should be no strife with the vanquished or the dead.

There's a snake lurking in the grass.

They are able because they think they are able.

They can conquer who believe they can.

They succeed, because they think they can.

Time flies never to be recalled.

Time is flying never to return.

Time passes irrevocably.

To have died once is enough.

Trust not to much to appearances.

Trust one who has tried.

Veiling truth in mystery.

Want of pluck shows want of blood.

We can't all do everything.

What each man feared would happen to himself, did not trouble him when he saw that it would ruin another.

What region of the earth is not full of our calamities?

Wherever the fates lead us let us follow.

Who asks whether the enemy was defeated by strategy or valor?

Who can blind lover's eyes?

Yield not to calamity, but face her boldly.

Your descendants shall gather your fruits.

Vince Lombardi Quotes

2008-07-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.

Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate.

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.

Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.

If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?

If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

If you can accept losing you can't win. If you can walk you can run. No one is ever hurt. Hurt is in your mind.

If you can accept losing, you can't win.

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you're not a winner.

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!

Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.

Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result.

Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things - blocking and tackling.

Success demands singleness of purpose.

Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That's the essence of it.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game and that is first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay and I never want to finish second again.

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.

Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.

Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

Thomas Jefferson Quotes

2008-07-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Delay is preferable to error.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

I cannot live without books.

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Information is the currency of democracy.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

One man with courage is a majority.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the tracts which favor that theory.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

Thomas Carlyle Quotes

2008-07-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

All great peoples are conservative.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Be not a slave of words.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther.

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

Happy the people whose annals are vacant.

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

No ghost was every seen by two pair of eyes.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

No pressure, no diamonds.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

No violent extreme endures.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

Science must have originated in the feeling that something was wrong.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is and what kind of man you long to be.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

The cut of a garment speaks of intellect and talent and the color of temperament and heart.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.

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.

What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it ;better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

Work alone is noble.

Worship is transcendent wonder.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

2008-07-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

Appraisals are where you get together with your team leader and agree what an outstanding member of the team you are, how much your contribution has been valued, what massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit softly.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

The American people abhor a vacuum.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not guilty."

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

Steven Wright Quotes

2008-07-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

Don't you hate when your hand falls asleep and you know it will be up all night.

Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don't get it.

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge... you can't hear him talk.

Hermits have no peer pressure.

How young can you die of old age?

I bought some batteries, but they weren't included.

I bought some instant water one time but I didn't know what to add to it.

I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I got a chain letter by fax. It's very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

I got this powdered water - now I don't know what to add.

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when suddenly the prescription ran out.

I had to stop driving my car for a while... the tires got dizzy.

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I'm home now. But leave a message and I'll call when I'm out.

I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.

I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it.

I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights. I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I'm gone.

I installed a skylight in my apartment... the people who live above me are furious!

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

I invented the cordless extension cord.

I like to reminisce with people I don't know.

I live on a one-way street that's also a dead end. I'm not sure how I got there.

I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'

I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights, so it looks like I'm the only one moving.

I saw a bank that said "24 Hour Banking," but I don't have that much time.

I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.

I think God's going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.

I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn't have to go so fast.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row.'

I went to a general store but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.

I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically.

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, "What for?" I said, "I'm going to buy some sugar."

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?

In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.

It doesn't matter what temperature the room is, it's always room temperature.

It's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.

Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang Happy Birthday.

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.

My friend has a baby. I'm recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

My friend has a baby. I'm writing down all the noises the baby makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

My neighbor has a circular driveway... he can't get out.

My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere.

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.

So, do you live around here often?

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen.

Sponges grow in the ocean. This bothers me. How deep would it be if they didn't?

The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing.

The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me.

There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

What a nice night for an evening.

What's another word for Thesaurus?

When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.

When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually.

When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?"

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, "Did you sleep good?" I said "No, I made a few mistakes."

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

Samuel Johnson Quotes

2008-07-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Language is the dress of thought.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Love is only one of many passions.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

No man was ever great by imitation.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

The future is purchased by the present.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Ronald Reagan Quotes

2008-07-19T09:10:00.001-07:00

A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

Don't be afraid to see what you see.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

Facts are stubborn things.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

How can a president not be an actor?

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.

I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon.

I'm not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.

I've often said there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

It doesn't do good to open doors for someone who doesn't have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose - somehow we win out.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

One picture is worth 1,000 denials.

One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.

Recession is when a neighbour loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for "the mess we're in."

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

There are no easy answers' but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.

They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Trust, but verify.

Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.

Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

We're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

Well, I learned a lot... I went down to Latin America to find out from them and (learn) their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face.

Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by the way he eats jelly beans.

You can tell alot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we're in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

2008-07-19T09:08:00.001-07:00

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

A good indignation brings out all one's powers.

A great man is always willing to be little.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

All diseases run into one, old age.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

All life is an experiment.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

All mankind love a lover.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

America is another name for opportunity.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

Be an opener of doors.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.

But genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Children are all foreigners.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Every wall is a door.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

God screens us evermore from premature ideas.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

If a man can... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

If in the least particular one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life?

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and curiosity.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself.

It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this, I have said all.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'always do what you are afraid to do.'

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Money often costs too much.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Nature hates calculators.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

Reality is a sliding door.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, repose in energy.

Revolutions go not backward.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The first wealth is health.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

The years teach much which the days never knew.

The years teach much which the days never know.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blueberries.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

There is also something excellent in every audience, the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.

There is always safety in valor.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

We are wiser than we know.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

We see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.

What you are comes to you.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Oscar Wilde Quotes

2008-07-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

All art is quite useless.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Everything popular is wrong.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

In married life three is company and two none.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

One can survive anything these days, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

There is no sin except stupidity.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

True friends stab you in the front.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

Who, being loved, is poor?

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Nelson Mandela Quotes

2008-07-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

It always seems impossible until its done.

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

There is nothing like returning to a place that reminds unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Muhammad Ali Quotes

2008-07-19T08:43:00.003-07:00

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

At home I am a nice guy: but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life.

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace.

I figure I'll be champ for about ten years and then I'll let my brother take over - like the Kennedys down in Washington.

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ''Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.''

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.

I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.

I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

I'll be floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.

I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round.

I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.

I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren't no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn't know about them.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.

It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.

It's not bragging if you can back it up.

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you.

My toughest fight was with my first wife.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.

No one knows what to say in the loser's locker room.

Old age is just a record of one's whole life.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Superman don't need no seat belt.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win.

To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

We have one life; it soon will be past; what we do for God is all that will last.

What keeps me going is goals.

When you are as great as I am it is hard to be humble.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

Mother Teresa Quotes

2008-07-19T08:42:00.001-07:00

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Good works are links that form a chain of love.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

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.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.

Peace begins with a smile.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.

The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.

There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

We are all pencils in the hand of God.

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so long,with so little,we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

Mohandas Gandhi Quotes

2008-07-19T08:36:00.001-07:00

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Action expresses priorities.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

Be the change that you want to see in the world.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

Commonsense is the realised sense of proportion.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living ?

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one's goal and not in reaching it.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.

I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.

I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice.

I know, to banish anger altogether from one's breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God's grace.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God's creation, woman, the object of our lust.

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

Imitation is the sincerest flattery.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

Morality is contraband in war.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

My life is my message.

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.

Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God.

Peace is its own reward.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

Self-respect knows no considerations.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

The good man is the friend of all living things.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent.

The real ornament of woman is her character, her purity.

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

We must become the change we want to see in the world.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

What is true of the individual will be to-morrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.

When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible.

Where love is, there God is also.

Where there is love there is life.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Maya Angelou Quotes

2008-07-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

All great achievements require time.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Effective action is always unjust.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Life loves the liver of it.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ''I'm with you kid. Let's go.''

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.

Nothing will work unless you do.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Some critics will write ' is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

2008-07-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

A lie cannot live.

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and... when they fail to do this purpose they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.

Seeing is not always believing.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.

The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

The time is always right to do what is right.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

We must use time creatively.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.