March 2007

Henrik Ibsen Quotations

-A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. -A forest bird never wants a cage. -A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth. -A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both [...]

William Makepeace Thackeray Quotations

Suppose in a game of life— and it is but a twopenny game after all— you are equally eager of winning. Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it? William Makepeace Thackeray, “Autour de mon Chapeau,” 1863

Wei Wu Wei

-Destroy ‘the ego’, hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where it gets off? Great fun, no doubt, but where is it? Must you not find it first? Isn’t there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it? The great difficulty here is that there isn’t one. -Living should be perpetual [...]

George Jean Nathan Quotations

-Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. George Jean Nathan

Jack London Quotations

-You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London

Karl Kraus Quotations

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Austrian satirist

Edmund Hillary (Sir)

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. Sir Edmund Hillary

Stephen King

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. Stephen King

Colette

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts. Colette

Richard Dawkins Quotations

-I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. -Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end. -Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the [...]

Cesare Pavese Quotations

-Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference. -The only joy in the world is to begin. Cesare Pavese

Bernard M. Baruch Quotations

-Never answer a critic, unless he’s right. -Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. -Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate [...]

Philip K. Dick Quotations

-Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. -Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night. Philip K. Dick

Upton Sinclair Quotations

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. Upton Sinclair

Gore Vidal

-I’m a born-again atheist. -It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. -Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. -Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn. Gore Vidal

Howard Aiken Quotations

-Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats. Howard Aiken

William Osler (Sir) Quotations

-The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. -Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. -Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought. Sir William Osler

William Morris Quotations

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. William Morris

Norah Phillips

I have found that people are usually much more moved by economics than by morals. Norah Phillips (1910-92)

P.J. O’Rourke Quotations

-When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -To mistrust science and deny the validity of the scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal. -Women’s clothes: never wear anything that [...]

Joyce Carol Oates

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck. Joyce Carol Oates

John Gaule

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. John Gaule

Honore de Balzac Quotations

-Behind every great fortune there is a crime. -Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other. -First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time. -Someday you will find out that there is [...]

Arthur Rubenstein Quotations

Don’t tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work. Arthur Rubenstein

Herbert Simon Quotations

-…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among [...]

Franz Kafka Quotations

-A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. -A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. -A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. -A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can [...]

Soren Kierkegaard Quotations

-Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. -At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference. -Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself. -Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this [...]

John Lennon Quotations

-Imagine there’s no Heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace You may say that [...]

Raymond Carver Quotations

-And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did, And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth. -Writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a [...]

Po Bronson

The hardest thing about doing the right thing for yourself is you usually have to do it alone. Po Bronson

Ovid Quotations

-Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. -I can’t live either without you or with you. -We two form a multitude. -The silent countenance often speaks. -Fortune and Love befriend the bold. -Nor is there any law more just, [...]

John

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32

Robert Kennedy Quotations

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

Hippocrates

-There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy. -Walking is man’s best medicine. Hippocrates

Karl Marx Quotations

The ruling ideas of every age are always the ideas of the ruling class. Karl Marx

George Eliot Quotations

-If art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally. -The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. -We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us. -Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. -One must be poor to know the [...]

Russell Hoban Quotations

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language? Russell Hoban

Terry Pratchett

-The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. -Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life. Terry Pratchett

Iggy Pop Quotations

-Nihilism is best done by professionals. Iggy Pop

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on Earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin. Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1882-1959) in The Worst Journey in the World

Nicolas Chamfort Quotations

-Nature didn’t tell me: “Don’t be poor.” Nor indeed: “Be rich.” But she does beg me: “Be independent.” -The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless. -An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and [...]

Hosea Ballou

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. Hosea Ballou

David G. Myers

-We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger David G. Myers

Robert Byrne

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. Robert Byrne

Joan of Arc

-I know this now. Every man gives his life to what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, so they give their lives to little or nothing. -The future is not a place we are going but something we can create. Joan of Arc

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Quotations

-I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. -I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. -I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is [...]

Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotations

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. Harry Emerson Fosdick

Frances Hutcheson Quotations

Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means. Frances Hutcheson

Richard Wolman

By “spiritual” I do not mean the creedal formulations of any faith tradition, as much as I respect those traditions and as helpful as their insights can be. I mean the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something larger and more trustworthy than our egos–with our own souls, with one another, with the [...]

Rick Warren

-Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. -Everything that happens to you has a spiritual significance. -What happens outwardly in your life is not as important as what happens inside of you. Rick Warren

Saint Theresa

Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee; All things are passing; God never changeth; Saint Theresa

John McCrae Quotations

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In [...]

Joseph Cornell

Let my mind become silent, And my thoughts come to rest. I want to be All that is before me. In self-forgetfulness, I become everything. Joseph Cornell

Langston Hughes Quotations

Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards all torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor – Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin, in the dark [...]

Edna St.Vincent Millay Quotations

-My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends– It gives a lovely light! -Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain, Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink and rise and [...]

Gregory Corso

Spirit is Life It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea Gregory Corso

Samuel Ullman Quotations

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means [...]

Daniel Quinn

-Man’s destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he’s done–almost. He hasn’t quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t [...]

Shakti Gawain Quotations

-Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. -An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so. -I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience. -Our bodies communicate to us [...]

Oriah Mountain Dreamer Quotations

The Invitation It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your [...]

Edmond Rostand Quotations

-My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists. -I Like this quote I dislike this quote“A promise more precise; the sealing of Confessions that till then were barely breathed; A rosy dot placed on the i in loving; A secret that’s confided to a mouth and not to ears. -I [...]

Michael Frayn

You can create a good impression on yourself by being right . . . but for creating a good impression on others there is nothing to beat being totally and catastrophically wrong.” Michael Frayn

Gustave Flaubert Quotations

-Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. -To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. Gustave Flaubert

Gene Fowler

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves. Gene Fowler