May those who love us, love us. And those that don’t love us, may god turn their hearts. And if he doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.
-An old Gaelic blessing.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent
-Salvador Hardin
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
-Samuel Johnson
May god stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.
-Old Egyptian Blessing
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
-Nelson Mandela [A Long Walk to Freedom]
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
Mathematician Robert R. Coveyou from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
There is not love, there is only proof.
-French Wise Man.
There are two ways to live your life:
1) As though nothing were a miracle
2) As though everything was.
-French Wise Man
Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.
-Whitney M. Young
Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
Live your life as an exclamation, not a question mark.
Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.
-Yiddish proverb
A man who is ‘of sound mind’ is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
-Paul Valery
One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
-Bradley Miller
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-Leo Tolstoy
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,”it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
-Lewis Carroll [Through the Looking Glass]
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
-J. Bronowski [The Ascent of Man]
I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.
-Elbert Hubbard
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It’s that they can’t see the problem.
-G.K. Chesterton
Modern man thinks he loses something – time – when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains — except kill it.
-Erich Fromm
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
-Marilyn vos Savant
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
-Mary Catherine Bateson
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be.
-Abraham Maslow
We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.
-Talmudic Saying
First say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.
-Epictetus
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
-John Ruskin
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
-Seneca
I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.
-Francoise Sagan
Be the master of your will and the slave of your conscience.
-Hasidic saying
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.
-Alice Miller
Don’t think of it as being vastly outnumbered. Think of it as having a very wide shot selection.
Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.
-Max L. Forman
Never explain – your friends don’t need it, and your enemies won’t believe you anyhow.
-Elbert Hubbard
Dear Mother: I’m all right. Stop worrying about me.
-Egyptian Papyrus Letter, circa 2000 BCE
If you don’t care where you are, then you aren’t lost.
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
-George Santayana
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-Oscar Levant
A closed mind is like a closed book: just a block of wood.
-Chinese Proverb
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
-Japanese proverb
There’s a fine line between being on the leading edge and being in the lunatic fringe.
-Frank Armstrong [Preparing for Tomorrow’s Challenges]
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
-Margaret Bonnano
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-Mark Twain
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
– Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love” (Robert Heinlein)
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
-James Oppenheim
A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts.
-Herbert V. Prochnow
Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.
-Germaine Greer
Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.
-H. Jackson Browne [P.S. I Love You]
If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.
-Mary Beth Danielson
Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
-Unknown
Remember, life is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens to you. Everyone dies, but not everyone fully lives. Too many people are having “near-life” experiences.
We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.
-George Orwell(??) On the military
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw
And from that point on, everyone who had a talent for it, lived happily ever after.
-Barron Von Munchausen
God’s hand writes straight, even when the light is crooked.
-Jewish Quote
What the world’s million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.
-W.B. Yeats, “The Shadow Waters.”
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-Samuel Butler
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
-Abraham Lincoln
Ask a question and you’re a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you’re a fool for the rest of your life.
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
-Ursula LeGuin
It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
-William Somerset Maugham
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-Mark Twain
There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.
-Anna Sewell [Black Beauty]
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
-George Bernard Shaw
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-Samuel Butler
No matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, turn back.
-Turkish proverb
Man is born to live, not to prepare to live.
-Boris Pasternak
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-Albert Einstein
There are two days that no one should ever worry about: yesterday and tomorrow.
Let me be the kind of person my dog believes I am.
Blessed are they for whom computers are magical and mysterious, for then we shall all have jobs.
The power of the press belongs to him as owns one.
The difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ is like a ham-and-eggs breakfast: the chicken was ‘involved’ – the pig was ‘committed’.
-unknown
There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else.
-Cyrus Curtis
When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things; there will be earth upon which to stand, or you will be given wings to fly.
“…One of those movies in which working-class women of various ages drawl Hallmark platitudes at one another when faced with overwhelming obstacles.”
…above and below from reviews for “Where the Heart Is”…
“…[Joan Cusack is] A life-saving antidote to some vaguely noxious saccharine overdose.”
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
-Aristotle, Greek writer and philosopher
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
-Will Rogers
Failure is closer to success than doing nothing.
-Ron Triolo, biomedical engineer
It takes three trees to make a row.
-Dr. John Irsfeld, PhD, via Nancy Maheras, English teacher, Western High School, Las Vegas, NV, 1994
Don’t cry because it’s over – smile because it happened.
Just because you have their attention doesn’t mean you have their respect.
-from the television show “King of the Hill”
The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender because this kiss already has within it that surrender.
-Emil Ludwig (1881-1948)
“As long as a word remains unspoken, you are its master; once you utter it, you are its slave.”
-Solomon ibn Gabirol, The Choice of Pearls (circa 1050)
The search for the mot juste is not a pedantic fad but a vital necessity. Words are our precision tools. Imprecision engenders ambiguity and hours are wasted in removing verbal misunderstandings before the argument of substance can begin.
-Anonymous Civil Servant
“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
-Rita Mae Brown
What one does is only one
Of several things he might have done.
One must know the things rejected
To appreciate the one selected.
-Unknown
Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
-Ovid
What’s outside of Pleasantville?
-from Pleasantville, written by Gary Ross
If not me, who? If not now, when?
-Rabbi Hillel
Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.
-George Jackson
I do know something. Just not with any certainty.
-Anne Heche as geologist Dr. Amy Barnes in the film “Volcano”
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
-Tony Robbins
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-Carl Sagan
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
-Charles Darwin
I didn’t say they hadn’t expired, I said they were still good.
-Kay Sanderson, December 2008