a
absence – academics – acclimation – achievement – admiration – admitting – adversity – advice – age – aiming – aloneness – amazement – ambition – america – american – ancestors – anger – animals – anna karenina – aphrodisiac – apologies – art – artists – asking – attainment – attornies – authority – average
b
background – bargain – barriers – beauty – bees – behavior – belief – belonging – betrayal – bicycle – birth – blame – blessing – bluntness – books – boredom – breaking – burden
c
caring – cars – cats – censorship – certainty– chains – chance – change – character – charm – cheapness – children – choice – circumstances – citizenship – comfortableness – commanding – committing – common sense – communication – company – complication – concepts – condemnation – conscience – consent – consequence – contradiction – control – conversation – conviction – corruption – courage – crazy – creativity – criticism – crying – cures – curiosity – customs – cynicism
d
dancing – danger – dare – day – days – death – defense – delusion – democracy – depression – description – desire – destiny – devotion – differences – difficulties – discovery – distinguishing – documentation – dogma – dogs – doing what’s right – doors – doubt – dread – dreams – driving – duty
e
earth – editing – education – emotion – emptiness – enemies – enjoyment – enterprise – envy – epitaph – equilibrium – escape – events – evil – exception – excess – exchange – excitement – existence – experience – expression – exuberance
f
faces – facts – failure – falling – falling in love – familiarity – family – fanaticism– fat – faulkner – fear – feeling – fiction – fighting – finding oneself – fire – fish – followers – fondness – food – foolishness – forgetting – form – freedom – freshmen – friendship – fulfillment – fun – future
g
genius – god – goodness – government – grasp – gravity – greatness – growing up
h
happening – happiness – harbor – hating – haven – having – hearing – heart – heaven – hell – help – high school – history – hitting bottom – home – honesty – honey – hope – how to – humanity – humility
i
ideas – identity – illness – imagination – imitation – imperfection – indignation – infinity – influence – inheritance – innovation – insight – inspiration – instinct – instruments – integrity – intelligence – intention – interest – intolerance – intuition
j
k
kids – killing – kindergarten – kindness – knowing – knowledge
l
language – lasting – laughing – lawyers – leaders – leadership – leading – learning – legality – leo tolstoy – letting go – liberation – liberty – license – lies – life – light – likeness – liking – limits – loneliness – longing – looking – losing – lost – love – luck – luxury
m
madness – magnets – man – masterpiece – maturity – meaning – medicine – memories – minds – mirrors – mistakes – moderation – mondays – money – morals – morning – motivation – music
n
nature – needs – neurosis – night – noise
o
obedience – occupation – opening – opportunity – optimism – order – outnumbering
p
pain – passion – past – patience – peace – people – perception – pessimism – photographs – pictures – piglet – pleasure – plot – poetry – poison – politicians – politics – pooh – position – possession – possibilities – power – premise – present – press – pretending – pride – prince charming – problems – procrastination – promises – property – prosperity – protection – purity
q
r
reach – reading – reality – realness – reason – reasoning – rebelliousness – rememberance – remembrance – repetition – representatives – resemblance – reserves – responsibility – rest – revolution – rewards – riches – rights – risk – romance – rules – running – running away
s
sacrifice – sadness – sameness – sanctuary – scholars – school – searching – secrets – seduction – seeing – seizing – selection – selfishness – selling – sensation – sense – settling – shame – significance – silence – simplicity – sin – singing – slavery – sobriety – solitude – solutions – soul – strangeness – strength – stupidity – submission – subversiveness – success – suffering – survival
t
taking away – taking back – talent – t’ang dynasty – teacher – teachers – teaching – tears – terribleness – testing point – thinking – thought – time – today – tomorrow – touching – tragedy – tranquility – translation – trap – treason – treasure – trouble – troublemaking – trust – truth – trying
u
understanding – uniqueness – united states – unity – unselfishishness – urges
v
values – vehicles – virtues – vision – vulnerability
w
waiting – wandering – wants – waste – weakness – wholeness – will – winning – winter – wisdom – wishes – wit – woman – words – work – world – worrying – worth – writers – writing – wrong
y
—
absence
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.— Thomas Haynes Bayly
academics
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.— J.D. Salinger
acclimation
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
achievement
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.— Ayn Rand
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.— Ayn Rand
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.— Bertrand Russell
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.— William Jennings Bryan
But be not afraid of greatness; some are born great some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.— William Shakespeare
admiration
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.— Joseph Addison
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.— Alexander Pope
admitting
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
adversity
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.— Washington Irving
advice
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.— Karl von Knebel
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.— Oscar Wilde
[Daddy] said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.— Anne Frank
age
[Daddy] said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.— Anne Frank
When I grow up I want to be a little boy.— Joseph Heller
Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery of which, during the first half of our time, we get a sight of the right side, and during the second half, the wrong. The wrong is not as pretty, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together [to make the pattern].— Arthur Schopenhauer
For the life of me, I cannot remember, what made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise. For the life of me, I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen.— Verve Pipe
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.— Oscar Wilde
aiming
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it:— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
aloneness
Solitude is un-American.— Erica Jong
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
amazement
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.— Leo Tolstoy
ambition
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.— David Starr Jordan
america
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.— Theodore White
There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools.— Albert Einstein
american
Solitude is un-American.— Erica Jong
High school is closer to the core of the U.S. experience than anything else I can think of.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
ancestors
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.— Native American Proverb
anger
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.— Abraham Lincoln
Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.— Horace
I believe people see what they want to see in a work of art. When you see joy and beauty in something, it’s because it’s a part of you. When you see negative, anger and fear in something, it’s because it’s a part of you.— Oprah Winfrey
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
animals
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticism.— George Eliot
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
anna karenina
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
aphrodisiac
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.— Henry Kissinger
apologies
You did not have to apologize for wanting to own your own soul. Your soul belonged to you – for better or worse. When all was said and done, it was all you had.— Erica Jong
art
Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.— Aristotle
Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable form – or else it is not art.— Jacques Barzun
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.— Pablo Picasso
I believe people see what they want to see in a work of art. When you see joy and beauty in something, it’s because it’s a part of you. When you see negative, anger and fear in something, it’s because it’s a part of you.— Oprah Winfrey
What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren’t for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, it edited.— Jerzy Kosinski
artists
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren’t for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, it edited.— Jerzy Kosinski
asking
Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.— Louis Armstrong
attainment
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain.— Kahlil Gibran
attornies
“Lawyers are all right, I guess – but it doesn’t appeal to me,” I said. “I mean they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.— J.D. Salinger
authority
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.— Ayn Rand
average
To be average scares the hell out of me.— Dick Seeger
background
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
bargain
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,— Sir Phillip Sydney
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
barriers
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.— Sven Goran Eriksson
beauty
I believe people see what they want to see in a work of art. When you see joy and beauty in something, it’s because it’s a part of you. When you see negative, anger and fear in something, it’s because it’s a part of you.— Oprah Winfrey
Exuberance is beauty.— William Blake
Beauty without expression tires.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.— Leo Tolstoy
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
bees
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
behavior
belief
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfills and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.— Thomas à Kempis
belonging
I remember we were driving, driving in your car, the speed so fast I felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us and your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder. And I had a feeling that I belonged. And I had a feeling I could be someone.— Tracy Chapman
betrayal
Love is too young to know what conscience is,— William Shakespeare
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults, thy sweet self prove.
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love: flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.
bicycle
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.— Gloria Steinem
birth
But be not afraid of greatness; some are born great some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.— William Shakespeare
blame
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.— George Bernard Shaw
The buck stops here.— Harry S. Truman
There is luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.— Oscar Wilde
blessing
May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face – the rain fall soft upon your fields. Until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.— Irish Blessing
These are the days you’ll remember. Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be as warm as this. And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true – that you are blessed and lucky. It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.— 10,000 Maniacs
bluntness
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.— Erica Jong
books
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.— Ernest Hemingway
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.— Virginia Woolf
boredom
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.— Bertrand Russell
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.— Ellen Parr
breaking
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.— Ernest Hemingway
burden
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfills and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.— Thomas à Kempis
That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober—this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.— Friedrich Nietzsche
caring
I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you need to look a the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and not caring.— Ernest Hemingway
cars
I remember we were driving, driving in your car, the speed so fast I felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us and your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder. And I had a feeling that I belonged. And I had a feeling I could be someone.— Tracy Chapman
cats
Dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you.— Mary Bly
Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.— Jim Davis
censorship
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
certainty
chains
L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans le fers. (Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.)— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
chance
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.— William Jennings Bryan
change
Some people know you like no one else can. They’ve seen you change, they’ve let you change.— My So Called Life (TV)
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
character
[Daddy] said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.— Anne Frank
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.— Leon Trotsky
If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.— Stendhal
charm
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
cheapness
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.— Henry David Thoreau
children
[Daddy] said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.— Anne Frank
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.— Native American Proverb
choice
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.— William Jennings Bryan
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.— Mae West
Friendship or love – one must choose. One cannot serve two masters.— René Crevel
circumstances
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.— George Bernard Shaw
citizenship
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.— Gunter Grass
comfortableness
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.— Dave Tyson Gentry
commanding
committing
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.— Cornelia Otis Skinner
common sense
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
communication
What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.— Donn Pearce
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.— Theodore White
The chief difficulty with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.— George Bernard Shaw
company
To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.— William Shakespeare
complication
There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.— E.B. White
concepts
Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.— Johann Kaspar Lavater
condemnation
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.— George Santayana
conscience
Love is too young to know what conscience is,— William Shakespeare
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults, thy sweet self prove.
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love: flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.
Conscience commands; love inspires.— A.J. Toynbee
consent
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.— Abraham Lincoln
consequence
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.— George Bernard Shaw
contradiction
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.— Ayn Rand
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.— Hannah Arendt
control
Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.— Horace
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.— Theodore White
Two things control man’s nature: instinct and experience.— Blaise Pascal
conversation
What is reading but silent conversation?— Walter Savage Landor
conviction
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.— Friedrich Nietzsche
corruption
It is not power that corrupts but fear. The fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.— Aung San Suu Kyi
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.— Eric Hoffer
courage
Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.— Mason Cooley
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.— Tom Krause
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.— C.S. Lewis
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
crazy
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be, I know it’s crazy.”— J.D. Salinger
creativity
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
criticism
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticism.— George Eliot
crying
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.— Psalms 30:5
How come when we look back on our tears we laugh, and when we look back upon our laughs, we cry?— Unknown
cures
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.— Ellen Parr
curiosity
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.— Ellen Parr
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.— William Lyon Phelps
customs
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
cynicism
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.— Erica Jong
dancing
Dance like no one is looking, love like you’ve never been hurt, sing like no one can hear you, live like it’s heaven on earth.— Mark Twain
danger
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.— Friedrich Nietzsche
dare
People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have come control over his destiny. That’s an exciting idea to me, better than waiting with everybody else to see what’s going to happen.— John H. Glenn, Jr.
day
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
days
The years tell us much that the days never knew.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
death
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.— Martin Luther King, Jr.
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.— Ayn Rand
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
defense
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.— Voltaire (nee François Marie Arouet)
delusion
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.— Leo Tolstoy
democracy
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
depression
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.— Sylvia Plath
description
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
desire
The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.— Chinese Fortune
destiny
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.— William Jennings Bryan
People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have come control over his destiny. That’s an exciting idea to me, better than waiting with everybody else to see what’s going to happen.— John H. Glenn, Jr.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.— Winston Churchill
devotion
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
differences
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.— Rosa Luxemburg
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.— Anonymous
difficulties
A difficulty for every solution.— (Viscount) Herbert Samuel
To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.— Friedrich Nietzsche
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.— Winston Churchill
discovery
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.— Tom Krause
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.— Bob Moawad
distinguishing
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.— Steve Jobs
documentation
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
dogma
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
dogs
Dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you.— Mary Bly
doing what’s right
Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It’s knowing what’s right.— Lyndon B. Johnson
doors
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.— Helen Keller
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.— Milton Berle
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.— William Blake
doubt
Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.— Mason Cooley
dread
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.— George Bernard Shaw
dreams
I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later.— Mitch Hedberg
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.— Ayn Rand
Today is for our dreaming. Tomorrow is for making our dreams come true.— Unknown
driving
I remember we were driving, driving in your car, the speed so fast I felt like I was drunk. City lights lay out before us and your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder. And I had a feeling that I belonged. And I had a feeling I could be someone.— Tracy Chapman
duty
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.— Gunter Grass
earth
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.— Ayn Rand
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.— Native American Proverb
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it:— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
editing
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
education
There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools.— Albert Einstein
You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.— Galileo
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.— J.D. Salinger
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
emotion
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.— William Wordsworth
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.— Friedrich Nietzsche
emptiness
Sometimes someone says something really small, but it fits in this empty place in your heart.— My So Called Life (TV)
enemies
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.— Friedrich Nietzsche
enjoyment
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
enterprise
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
envy
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
epitaph
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.— Friedrich Nietzsche
equilibrium
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
escape
She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.— Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
We attempt to escape ourselves to find ourselves.— Erica Jong
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of. -Michel de Montaigne— Michel de Montaigne
If I had loved him enough, I would have cured his sadness instead of being engulfed by it and longing to escape from it.— Erica Jong
events
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.— Eleanor Roosevelt
evil
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.— Mae West
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
exception
In a world of imperfections you are the one exception.— Sheldon Nathaniel
excess
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.— Oscar Wilde
exchange
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,— Sir Phillip Sydney
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
excitement
I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you need to look a the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and not caring.— Ernest Hemingway
existence
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
experience
High school is closer to the core of the U.S. experience than anything else I can think of.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Two things control man’s nature: instinct and experience.— Blaise Pascal
How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?— Erica Jong
expression
Beauty without expression tires.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
True wit is Nature to advantage dress’d— Alexander Pope
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.
exuberance
Exuberance is beauty.— William Blake
faces
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
facts
What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren’t for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, it edited.— Jerzy Kosinski
failure
What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.— Donn Pearce
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.— Sven Goran Eriksson
Success makes us intolerant of failure, and failure makes us intolerant of success.— William Feather
Success goes to your head, failure to your heart.— Bertrand Russell
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
falling
This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.— J.D. Salinger
falling in love
I am in love – and, my God, it’s the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love, if you haven’t done so already. You are wasting your life.— D.H. Lawrence
familiarity
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.— Joseph Addison
family
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.— George Eliot
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.— Thomas Jefferson
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.— Thomas Jefferson
The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.— George Santayana
All happy families resemble one other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Leo Tolstoy
fanaticism
fat
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.— Alexander Woollcott
faulkner
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.— Ernest Hemingway
fear
I believe people see what they want to see in a work of art. When you see joy and beauty in something, it’s because it’s a part of you. When you see negative, anger and fear in something, it’s because it’s a part of you.— Oprah Winfrey
To be average scares the hell out of me.— Dick Seeger
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.— Sven Goran Eriksson
It is not power that corrupts but fear. The fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.— Aung San Suu Kyi
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.— Henry David Thoreau
People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have come control over his destiny. That’s an exciting idea to me, better than waiting with everybody else to see what’s going to happen.— John H. Glenn, Jr.
But be not afraid of greatness; some are born great some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.— William Shakespeare
How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?— Erica Jong
feeling
There are no words to say, no words to convey, this feeling inside I have for you. Deep in my heart, safe from the guards, of intellect and reason. Leaving me at a loss for words to express my feelings. Deep in my heart.— Tracy Chapman
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.— William Wordsworth
fiction
What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren’t for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, it edited.— Jerzy Kosinski
If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and man; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even better.— Virginia Woolf
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.— Virginia Woolf
fighting
The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.— Ernest Hemingway
finding oneself
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.— J.D. Salinger
We attempt to escape ourselves to find ourselves.— Erica Jong
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be, I know it’s crazy.”— J.D. Salinger
“I think that one of these days,” he said,” you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.”— J.D. Salinger
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
fire
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.— Washington Irving
fish
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.— Gloria Steinem
followers
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.— Steve Jobs
fondness
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.— Thomas Haynes Bayly
food
There are three types of friends: those like food, without which you can’t live; those like medicine, which you need occasionally; and those like an illness, which you never want.— Solomon Ibn Gabirol
foolishness
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.— Alexander Pope
forgetting
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.— Benjamin Franklin
form
Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable form – or else it is not art.— Jacques Barzun
freedom
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.— Rosa Luxemburg
L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans le fers. (Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.)— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.— George Bernard Shaw
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.— Voltaire (nee François Marie Arouet)
freshmen
For the life of me, I cannot remember, what made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise. For the life of me, I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen.— Verve Pipe
friendship
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticism.— George Eliot
Here at the frontier, there are falling leaves. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, And you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups on my table.— Anonymous
Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.— Julius J. Epstein, Philip Epstein, Howard Koch, Michael Curtiz
Treat your friends as you do your pictures; and place them in their best light.— Jennie Jerome Churchill
Friendship or love – one must choose. One cannot serve two masters.— René Crevel
It’s the friends you can call up at 4 am that matter.— Marlene Dietrich
To find a friend one must close one eye; to keep him, two.— Norman Douglas
There are three types of friends: those like food, without which you can’t live; those like medicine, which you need occasionally; and those like an illness, which you never want.— Solomon Ibn Gabirol
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.— Dave Tyson Gentry
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.— Elbert Hubbard
I get by with a little help from my friends.— John Lennon
A day without you is like a day without honey.— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
“Are we going to be friends forever? Asked Piglet. Even longer, Pooh answered.”— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Some people know you like no one else can. They’ve seen you change, they’ve let you change.— My So Called Life (TV)
He seemed to feel that if you said something was all right, it immediately was, no matter what.— The Outsiders
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.— Frances Ward Weller
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.— Oscar Wilde
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.— Virginia Woolf
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.— Paramahansa Yogananda
You are my anytime.— Fugazi
fulfillment
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfills and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.— Thomas à Kempis
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.— Hannah Arendt
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
fun
The trouble with trouble is that it started out as fun.— Anonymous
future
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.— Albert Einstein
People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have come control over his destiny. That’s an exciting idea to me, better than waiting with everybody else to see what’s going to happen.— John H. Glenn, Jr.
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hand and hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.— John Wayne
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.— Winston Churchill
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
genius
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.— Anonymous
Talent is what you possess, genius is what possesses you.— Malcolm Cowley
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
god
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
goodness
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.— Leo Tolstoy
government
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.— Thomas Jefferson
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.— Abraham Lincoln
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
grasp
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?— Robert Browning
gravity
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it:— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
greatness
There’s a pinch of the madman in every great man.— French Proverb
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.— J.C. Hare, A.W. Hare
To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.— Friedrich Nietzsche
But be not afraid of greatness; some are born great some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.— William Shakespeare
We cannot all do great things but we can do small things with great love.— Mother Teresa
growing up
When I grow up I want to be a little boy.— Joseph Heller
happening
Happiness is not about what happens to you, but how you choose to respond to what happens. That’s why it’s called happiness not happenness – though it could be called hope-ness. You must always leave room for hope that all has happened for a good cause.— Karen Salmansohn
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
happiness
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.— Ayn Rand
It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.— Thomas Jefferson
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.— Thomas Jefferson
All happy families resemble one other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Leo Tolstoy
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.— Epictetus
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.— Helen Keller
We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.— La Rochefoucauld
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
Happiness is not about what happens to you, but how you choose to respond to what happens. That’s why it’s called happiness not happenness – though it could be called hope-ness. You must always leave room for hope that all has happened for a good cause.— Karen Salmansohn
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.— George Santayana
It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.— E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
My happiest times, my worst times – they are things only I remember – nobody else remembers them.— Amy Tan
harbor
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
hating
It’s not that I didn’t like it. It’s that I hated it.— Marlon Brando
haven
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
having
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.— Theodore Roosevelt
hearing
Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity.— William Wordsworth
heart
Success goes to your head, failure to your heart.— Bertrand Russell
Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.— Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.— Paramahansa Yogananda
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.— Thomas Haynes Bayly
The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.— Charlotte Bronte
There are no words to say, no words to convey, this feeling inside I have for you. Deep in my heart, safe from the guards, of intellect and reason. Leaving me at a loss for words to express my feelings. Deep in my heart.— Tracy Chapman
Sometimes someone says something really small, but it fits in this empty place in your heart.— My So Called Life (TV)
The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand.— Blaise Pascal
My strength is as the strength of ten,— Alfred Tennyson
Because my heart is pure.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.— Judy Garland
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,— Sir Phillip Sydney
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
The memories we give may a lifetime live in the heart of those we hold so close.— Unknown
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.— Washington Irving
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.— Cornelia Otis Skinner
heaven
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.— Ayn Rand
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?— Robert Browning
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.— Ayn Rand
hell
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.— Ayn Rand
help
“Hey Barrett! What makes you think you’re so special? Are you listening? What I said, what I’m saying, is you’re so special. You’re my teacher, so teach me, help me… Hey teach, which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.”— Joe Feroni, Up the Down Staircase (play)
high school
High school is closer to the core of the U.S. experience than anything else I can think of.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
history
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
hitting bottom
This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.— J.D. Salinger
home
She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.— Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.— Oliver Wendell Holmes
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.— Thomas Jefferson
honesty
I have never been able to cope with jealousy. I wish someone would teach me how. It leaves me weak and at a loss for honest words.— Joseph Heller
honey
A day without you is like a day without honey.— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
hope
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
how to
The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses.— Arthur Adamov
humanity
Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity.— William Wordsworth
humility
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
ideas
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.— Eleanor Roosevelt
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas … that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.— Michel Foucault
identity
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.— Hannah Arendt
illness
There are three types of friends: those like food, without which you can’t live; those like medicine, which you need occasionally; and those like an illness, which you never want.— Solomon Ibn Gabirol
imagination
We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.— La Rochefoucauld
imitation
Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.— Aristotle
imperfection
In a world of imperfections you are the one exception.— Sheldon Nathaniel
indignation
A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
infinity
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.— William Blake
influence
People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.— T.S. Eliot
inheritance
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.— Native American Proverb
innovation
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.— Steve Jobs
insight
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.— Herodotus
inspiration
Conscience commands; love inspires.— A.J. Toynbee
instinct
Two things control man’s nature: instinct and experience.— Blaise Pascal
instruments
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.— Erica Jong
integrity
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
intelligence
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.— Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.— William Lyon Phelps
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas … that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.— Michel Foucault
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.— Colette
intention
“Lawyers are all right, I guess – but it doesn’t appeal to me,” I said. “I mean they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.— J.D. Salinger
interest
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?— Erica Jong
intolerance
Success makes us intolerant of failure, and failure makes us intolerant of success.— William Feather
intuition
Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.— Johann Kaspar Lavater
jealousy
I have never been able to cope with jealousy. I wish someone would teach me how. It leaves me weak and at a loss for honest words.— Joseph Heller
joy
I believe people see what they want to see in a work of art. When you see joy and beauty in something, it’s because it’s a part of you. When you see negative, anger and fear in something, it’s because it’s a part of you.— Oprah Winfrey
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.— Psalms 30:5
kids
killing
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.— Ernest Hemingway
kindergarten
You make every day feel like kindergarten.— Natural Born Killers
kindness
The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.— William Wordsworth
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
knowing
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.— Elbert Hubbard
Some people know you like no one else can. They’ve seen you change, they’ve let you change.— My So Called Life (TV)
The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses.— Arthur Adamov
Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It’s knowing what’s right.— Lyndon B. Johnson
knowledge
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.— George Santayana
language
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
lasting
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.— Oscar Wilde
laughing
How come when we look back on our tears we laugh, and when we look back upon our laughs, we cry?— Unknown
I can’t say whether we had more wit amongst us than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end just as well.— Oliver Goldsmith
We laugh and we touch.— Anne Sexton
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.— Nicol Williamson
lawyers
“Lawyers are all right, I guess – but it doesn’t appeal to me,” I said. “I mean they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.— J.D. Salinger
leaders
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.— Steve Jobs
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.— Ayn Rand
leadership
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.— Ayn Rand
leading
There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.— E.B. White
learning
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
Life is a strange thing. Just when you think you’ve learned how to use it, it’s gone.— Shakespeare’s Sister
legality
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.— Alexander Woollcott
leo tolstoy
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
letting go
It’s all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.— Mick Jagger
liberation
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
liberty
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.— George Bernard Shaw
license
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
lies
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.— Pablo Picasso
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.— Friedrich Nietzsche
life
Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery of which, during the first half of our time, we get a sight of the right side, and during the second half, the wrong. The wrong is not as pretty, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together [to make the pattern].— Arthur Schopenhauer
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.— William Lyon Phelps
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.— Martin Luther King, Jr.
What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.— George Eliot
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.— Thomas Jefferson
A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.— Latin Proverb
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hand and hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.— John Wayne
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once and awhile, you could miss it.— Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.— Bob Moawad
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.— Theodore Roosevelt
Life is nothing until it is lived.— Jean Paul Sartre
Life is a strange thing. Just when you think you’ve learned how to use it, it’s gone.— Shakespeare’s Sister
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.— E.B. White
The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.— William Wordsworth
It’s always tempting to lose yourself with someone who’s maybe lost themselves; but eventually, you want reality.— My So Called Life (TV)
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
The memories we give may a lifetime live in the heart of those we hold so close.— Unknown
Dance like no one is looking, love like you’ve never been hurt, sing like no one can hear you, live like it’s heaven on earth.— Mark Twain
light
Treat your friends as you do your pictures; and place them in their best light.— Jennie Jerome Churchill
Light tomorrow with today!— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
likeness
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.— Walter Lippman
liking
It’s not that I didn’t like it. It’s that I hated it.— Marlon Brando
limits
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.— Anonymous
loneliness
Solitude is un-American.— Erica Jong
longing
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain.— Kahlil Gibran
looking
This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.— J.D. Salinger
losing
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.— Tom Krause
lost
It’s always tempting to lose yourself with someone who’s maybe lost themselves; but eventually, you want reality.— My So Called Life (TV)
“Hey Barrett! What makes you think you’re so special? Are you listening? What I said, what I’m saying, is you’re so special. You’re my teacher, so teach me, help me… Hey teach, which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.”— Joe Feroni, Up the Down Staircase (play)
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.— Attributed to Robert Frost
love
Love is too young to know what conscience is,— William Shakespeare
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults, thy sweet self prove.
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love: flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.
Conscience commands; love inspires.— A.J. Toynbee
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.— Oliver Wendell Holmes
It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known.— Thomas Jefferson
A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.— Latin Proverb
Friendship or love – one must choose. One cannot serve two masters.— René Crevel
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.— Elbert Hubbard
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.— Oscar Wilde
The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.— William Wordsworth
Love yourself first and everything falls into line.— Lucille Ball
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.— Hal David
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”— Erich Fromm
You are my anytime.— Fugazi
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.— Judy Garland
Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.— Franklin P. Jones
If I had loved him enough, I would have cured his sadness instead of being engulfed by it and longing to escape from it.— Erica Jong
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.— Erica Jong
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfills and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.— Thomas à Kempis
I am in love – and, my God, it’s the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love, if you haven’t done so already. You are wasting your life.— D.H. Lawrence
We cannot all do great things but we can do small things with great love.— Mother Teresa
Love is not love until love’s vulnerable.— Theodore Roethke
Love all, trust a few,— William Shakespeare
Do wrong to none.
To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.— William Shakespeare
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,— Sir Phillip Sydney
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
Dance like no one is looking, love like you’ve never been hurt, sing like no one can hear you, live like it’s heaven on earth.— Mark Twain
luck
These are the days you’ll remember. Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be as warm as this. And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true – that you are blessed and lucky. It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.— 10,000 Maniacs
Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.— Rita Golden Gelman
luxury
There is luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.— Oscar Wilde
madness
Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.— Horace
There’s a pinch of the madman in every great man.— French Proverb
magnets
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.— Paramahansa Yogananda
man
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.— Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.— Latin Proverb
L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans le fers. (Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.)— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.— George Bernard Shaw
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain.— Kahlil Gibran
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.— Abraham Lincoln
There’s a pinch of the madman in every great man.— French Proverb
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.— J.C. Hare, A.W. Hare
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.— Bertrand Russell
The best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.— William Wordsworth
A gentleman does things no gentleman should do in a way only a gentleman can.— Luigi Banzini
The right man is the one that seizes the moment.— Goethe
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.— Herodotus
Two things control man’s nature: instinct and experience.— Blaise Pascal
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.— William Blake
That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober—this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.— Friedrich Nietzsche
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.— Henry David Thoreau
Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.— Anonymous
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.— Colette
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
Women can do everything; men can do the rest.— Russian proverb
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.— Gloria Steinem
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?— Sojourner Truth
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.— Charlotte Whitton
If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and man; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even better.— Virginia Woolf
masterpiece
The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.— George Santayana
maturity
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”— Erich Fromm
meaning
Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.— E.B. White
medicine
There are three types of friends: those like food, without which you can’t live; those like medicine, which you need occasionally; and those like an illness, which you never want.— Solomon Ibn Gabirol
memories
These are the days you’ll remember. Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be as warm as this. And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true – that you are blessed and lucky. It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.— 10,000 Maniacs
How come when we look back on our tears we laugh, and when we look back upon our laughs, we cry?— Unknown
What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.— George Eliot
The memories we give may a lifetime live in the heart of those we hold so close.— Unknown
Think only of the past as its remembrance give your pleasure.— Jane Austen
minds
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.— Eleanor Roosevelt
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.— J.D. Salinger
mirrors
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
mistakes
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.— Winston Churchill
moderation
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.— Oscar Wilde
mondays
Unromantic as Monday Morning.— Charlotte Bronte
money
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
morals
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.— Ayn Rand
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.— Leon Trotsky
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.— Alexander Woollcott
morning
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.— Psalms 30:5
motivation
Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.— Jim Davis
music
Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity.— William Wordsworth
nature
Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.— Aristotle
The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.— George Santayana
Two things control man’s nature: instinct and experience.— Blaise Pascal
Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.”— Robert Byrne
True wit is Nature to advantage dress’d— Alexander Pope
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.
needs
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”— Erich Fromm
You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.— The Rolling Stones
neurosis
The only thing to know is how to use your neuroses.— Arthur Adamov
night
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.— Psalms 30:5
noise
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
obedience
Dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you.— Mary Bly
occupation
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.— Thomas Jefferson
opening
An opening won’t come to one, but one must go to it.— Charles Dickens
opportunity
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.— Milton Berle
An opening won’t come to one, but one must go to it.— Charles Dickens
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.— Winston Churchill
optimism
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfills and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.— Thomas à Kempis
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.— Winston Churchill
order
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
outnumbering
If it’s me against 48, I feel sorry for the 48.— Margaret Thatcher, (when out-voted at a world conference)
pain
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.— Herodotus
passion
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.— Joseph Addison
Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.— Horace
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober—this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.— Friedrich Nietzsche
past
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hand and hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.— John Wayne
Think only of the past as its remembrance give your pleasure.— Jane Austen
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.— George Santayana
patience
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
peace
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
I found an island in your arms, country in your eyes.— The Doors
people
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.— Eleanor Roosevelt
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.— George Bernard Shaw
perception
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.— William Blake
pessimism
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.— Winston Churchill
photographs
Treat your friends as you do your pictures; and place them in their best light.— Jennie Jerome Churchill
pictures
Treat your friends as you do your pictures; and place them in their best light.— Jennie Jerome Churchill
piglet
“Are we going to be friends forever? Asked Piglet. Even longer, Pooh answered.”— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
pleasure
Think only of the past as its remembrance give your pleasure.— Jane Austen
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.— Henry David Thoreau
plot
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
poetry
Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you’re going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened and ever sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on the score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.— J.D. Salinger
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.— Attributed to Robert Frost
Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.— Joseph Roux
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.— William Wordsworth
poison
Power is poison.— Henry B. Adams
politicians
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas … that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.— Michel Foucault
politics
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
pooh
“Are we going to be friends forever? Asked Piglet. Even longer, Pooh answered.”— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
position
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
possession
Talent is what you possess, genius is what possesses you.— Malcolm Cowley
possibilities
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.— George Santayana
power
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.— Ayn Rand
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.— Theodore White
It is not power that corrupts but fear. The fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.— Aung San Suu Kyi
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.— Epictetus
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.— Herodotus
Power is poison.— Henry B. Adams
People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.— T.S. Eliot
A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.— Eric Hoffer
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.— Henry Kissinger
premise
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.— Ayn Rand
present
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.— Gail Lumet Buckley
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
The right man is the one that seizes the moment.— Goethe
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
press
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.— Voltaire (nee François Marie Arouet)
pretending
We are what we pretend to be.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing – I mean it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning to do without something one really wants… What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.— Doris Lessing
pride
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
prince charming
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
problems
Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It’s knowing what’s right.— Lyndon B. Johnson
A difficulty for every solution.— (Viscount) Herbert Samuel
procrastination
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.— Mark Twain
promises
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.— Hannah Arendt
That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober—this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.— Friedrich Nietzsche
We laugh and we touch.— Anne Sexton
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
property
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.— Thomas Jefferson
prosperity
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.— Washington Irving
protection
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
purity
My strength is as the strength of ten,— Alfred Tennyson
Because my heart is pure.
questions
Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticism.— George Eliot
Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.— Louis Armstrong
Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.— Friedrich Nietzsche
reach
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?— Robert Browning
reading
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.— Benjamin Franklin
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.— Ernest Hemingway
I am a part of all that I read.— John Kieran
What is reading but silent conversation?— Walter Savage Landor
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.— Virginia Woolf
reality
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
It’s always tempting to lose yourself with someone who’s maybe lost themselves; but eventually, you want reality.— My So Called Life (TV)
realness
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
It’s always tempting to lose yourself with someone who’s maybe lost themselves; but eventually, you want reality.— My So Called Life (TV)
reason
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand.— Blaise Pascal
To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.— William Shakespeare
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
reasoning
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.— Ayn Rand
rebelliousness
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
rememberance
These are the days you’ll remember. Never before and never since, I promise, will the whole world be as warm as this. And as you feel it, you’ll know it’s true – that you are blessed and lucky. It’s true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.— 10,000 Maniacs
Think only of the past as its remembrance give your pleasure.— Jane Austen
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.— George Santayana
remembrance
How come when we look back on our tears we laugh, and when we look back upon our laughs, we cry?— Unknown
What we remember lacks the hard edge of fact. To help us along we create little fictions, highly subtle and individual scenarios which clarify and shape our experience. The remembered event becomes a fiction, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings. This is obvious to me. If it weren’t for these structures, art would be too personal for the artist to create, much less for the audience to grasp. Even film, the most literal of all the arts, it edited.— Jerzy Kosinski
My happiest times, my worst times – they are things only I remember – nobody else remembers them.— Amy Tan
repetition
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.— George Santayana
representatives
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.— George Santayana
resemblance
All happy families resemble one other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Leo Tolstoy
reserves
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.— Leon Trotsky
responsibility
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.— George Bernard Shaw
rest
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
revolution
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
rewards
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
riches
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.— Henry David Thoreau
rights
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.— Voltaire (nee François Marie Arouet)
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
Sisters, I a’n’t clear what you’d be after. Ef women want any rights more’n dey’s got, why don’t dey jes take ‘em, an’ not be talkin’ about it?— Sojourner Truth
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.— Colette
risk
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.— Erica Jong
Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.— Rita Golden Gelman
romance
Unromantic as Monday Morning.— Charlotte Bronte
rules
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
running
She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.— Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
running away
She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.— Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
sacrifice
Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
sadness
If I had loved him enough, I would have cured his sadness instead of being engulfed by it and longing to escape from it.— Erica Jong
sameness
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.— Walter Lippman
sanctuary
A family is a haven of rest, a sanctuary of peace and most of all a harbor of love.— Manny Feldman
scholars
I’m not trying to tell you… that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant and creative to begin with – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And – most important – nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.— J.D. Salinger
school
There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools.— Albert Einstein
searching
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of. -Michel de Montaigne— Michel de Montaigne
This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.— J.D. Salinger
secrets
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.— William Lyon Phelps
The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.— Charlotte Bronte
seduction
In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but then when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced for all the wrong reasons.— Erica Jong
seeing
I shut my eyes in order to see.— Paul Gauguin
seizing
The right man is the one that seizes the moment.— Goethe
selection
People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.— T.S. Eliot
selfishness
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.— Paramahansa Yogananda
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
selling
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
sensation
Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable form – or else it is not art.— Jacques Barzun
sense
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.— Alexander Pope
settling
Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life, I find.— John F. Kennedy
shame
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.— Abraham Lincoln
significance
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain.— Kahlil Gibran
silence
What is reading but silent conversation?— Walter Savage Landor
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.— Dave Tyson Gentry
The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.— Charlotte Bronte
Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments. It seems to hammer you into the ground. It drives you deeper and deeper into your own guilt. It makes the voices inside your head accuse you more viciously than any outside voices ever could.— Erica Jong
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.— Sylvia Plath
simplicity
And all the loveliest things there be— Edna St. Vincent Millay
Come simply, so it seems to me.
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.— J.C. Hare, A.W. Hare
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.— Ernest Hemingway
sin
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.— Cornelia Otis Skinner
singing
Dance like no one is looking, love like you’ve never been hurt, sing like no one can hear you, live like it’s heaven on earth.— Mark Twain
slavery
L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans le fers. (Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.)— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
sobriety
That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober—this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.— Friedrich Nietzsche
solitude
Solitude is un-American.— Erica Jong
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
solutions
A difficulty for every solution.— (Viscount) Herbert Samuel
soul
What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.— George Eliot
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.— Judy Garland
You did not have to apologize for wanting to own your own soul. Your soul belonged to you – for better or worse. When all was said and done, it was all you had.— Erica Jong
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
strangeness
Life is a strange thing. Just when you think you’ve learned how to use it, it’s gone.— Shakespeare’s Sister
strength
My strength is as the strength of ten,— Alfred Tennyson
Because my heart is pure.
You’re stronger than you think. We all are. We never think we can do things until we find ourselves doing them.— A. Bates
Weakness is a better teacher than strength. Weakness must learn to understand the obstacles that strength brushes aside.— Mason Cooley
A woman is like a teabag – only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.— Nancy Reagan
stupidity
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.— Anonymous
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
submission
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
subversiveness
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.— Erica Jong
success
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.— Bertrand Russell
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.— Oscar Wilde
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.— Sven Goran Eriksson
Success makes us intolerant of failure, and failure makes us intolerant of success.— William Feather
Success goes to your head, failure to your heart.— Bertrand Russell
suffering
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.— Herodotus
survival
Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.— Ayn Rand
taking away
We laugh and we touch.— Anne Sexton
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
taking back
Some words when spoken can’t be taken back.— Pearl Jam
talent
Talent is what you possess, genius is what possesses you.— Malcolm Cowley
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
t’ang dynasty
Here at the frontier, there are falling leaves. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, And you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups on my table.— Anonymous
teacher
“Hey Barrett! What makes you think you’re so special? Are you listening? What I said, what I’m saying, is you’re so special. You’re my teacher, so teach me, help me… Hey teach, which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.”— Joe Feroni, Up the Down Staircase (play)
teachers
You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.— Galileo
Weakness is a better teacher than strength. Weakness must learn to understand the obstacles that strength brushes aside.— Mason Cooley
You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.— J.D. Salinger
teaching
You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.— Galileo
“Hey Barrett! What makes you think you’re so special? Are you listening? What I said, what I’m saying, is you’re so special. You’re my teacher, so teach me, help me… Hey teach, which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.”— Joe Feroni, Up the Down Staircase (play)
Weakness is a better teacher than strength. Weakness must learn to understand the obstacles that strength brushes aside.— Mason Cooley
You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.— J.D. Salinger
tears
How come when we look back on our tears we laugh, and when we look back upon our laughs, we cry?— Unknown
terribleness
It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing – I mean it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning to do without something one really wants… What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.— Doris Lessing
testing point
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.— C.S. Lewis
thinking
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas … that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.— Michel Foucault
Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.— Friedrich Nietzsche
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.— Walter Lippman
thought
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.— Ayn Rand
time
The years tell us much that the days never knew.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
We laugh and we touch.— Anne Sexton
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
today
Today is for our dreaming. Tomorrow is for making our dreams come true.— Unknown
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
Light tomorrow with today!— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
tomorrow
Today is for our dreaming. Tomorrow is for making our dreams come true.— Unknown
Light tomorrow with today!— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hand and hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.— John Wayne
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.— Mark Twain
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
touching
We laugh and we touch.— Anne Sexton
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.
tragedy
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.— Oscar Wilde
tranquility
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.— William Wordsworth
translation
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.— Attributed to Robert Frost
trap
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
treason
Love is too young to know what conscience is,— William Shakespeare
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults, thy sweet self prove.
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love: flesh stays no farther reason,
But rising at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
No want of conscience hold it that I call
Her “love” for whose dear love I rise and fall.
treasure
The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.— Charlotte Bronte
trouble
The trouble with trouble is that it started out as fun.— Anonymous
“Don’t strike a flea on a tiger’s head.” Don’t settle one trouble to make a bigger one.— Amy Tan
troublemaking
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.— Steve Jobs
trust
He seemed to feel that if you said something was all right, it immediately was, no matter what.— The Outsiders
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
I’ll tell you what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.— Charles Dickens
Love all, trust a few,— William Shakespeare
Do wrong to none.
Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.— Rita Golden Gelman
truth
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.— Pablo Picasso
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.— Ernest Hemingway
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.— J.C. Hare, A.W. Hare
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.— William Shakespeare
Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.— Joseph Roux
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.— Friedrich Nietzsche
The well of true wit is truth itself.— George Meredith
trying
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something.— Franklin D. Roosevelt
understanding
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are.— Unknown
The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand.— Blaise Pascal
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
uniqueness
All happy families resemble one other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Leo Tolstoy
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.— Rosa Luxemburg
united states
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.— Theodore White
There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools.— Albert Einstein
High school is closer to the core of the U.S. experience than anything else I can think of.— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
unity
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.— Leo Tolstoy
unselfishishness
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.— Paramahansa Yogananda
urges
Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.— Jim Davis
values
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.— Ayn Rand
vehicles
It’s for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before.— Erica Jong
virtues
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.— C.S. Lewis
vision
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.— John Maxwell
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.— Ayn Rand
vulnerability
Love is not love until love’s vulnerable.— Theodore Roethke
waiting
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.— William Jennings Bryan
People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have come control over his destiny. That’s an exciting idea to me, better than waiting with everybody else to see what’s going to happen.— John H. Glenn, Jr.
wandering
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.— Hannah Arendt
wants
Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.— Vince Lombardi
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.— St. Francis de Sales
You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.— The Rolling Stones
It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing – I mean it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning to do without something one really wants… What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.— Doris Lessing
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.— W. Somerset Maugham
waste
“I think that one of these days,” he said,” you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.”— J.D. Salinger
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.— Steve Jobs
I am in love – and, my God, it’s the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love, if you haven’t done so already. You are wasting your life.— D.H. Lawrence
weakness
I have never been able to cope with jealousy. I wish someone would teach me how. It leaves me weak and at a loss for honest words.— Joseph Heller
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.— Ayn Rand
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.— Eric Hoffer
Weakness is a better teacher than strength. Weakness must learn to understand the obstacles that strength brushes aside.— Mason Cooley
wholeness
Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.— Johann Kaspar Lavater
will
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.— Epictetus
winning
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.— Tom Krause
Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.— Vince Lombardi
winter
Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.”— Robert Byrne
wisdom
The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.— Chinese Fortune
wishes
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.— St. Francis de Sales
wit
I can’t say whether we had more wit amongst us than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end just as well.— Oliver Goldsmith
The well of true wit is truth itself.— George Meredith
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.— Friedrich Nietzsche
True wit is Nature to advantage dress’d— Alexander Pope
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.
If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.— Stendhal
If it’s me against 48, I feel sorry for the 48.— Margaret Thatcher, (when out-voted at a world conference)
woman
Sisters, I a’n’t clear what you’d be after. Ef women want any rights more’n dey’s got, why don’t dey jes take ‘em, an’ not be talkin’ about it?— Sojourner Truth
A woman is like a teabag – only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.— Nancy Reagan
Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.— Anonymous
The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.— Colette
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.— Washington Irving
The woman… can never let herself alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away “from all this.” All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?— Erica Jong
Women can do everything; men can do the rest.— Russian proverb
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.— Cornelia Otis Skinner
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.— Gloria Steinem
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?— Sojourner Truth
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.— Charlotte Whitton
If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.— Nicol Williamson
If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and man; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even better.— Virginia Woolf
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.— Virginia Woolf
words
There are no words to say, no words to convey, this feeling inside I have for you. Deep in my heart, safe from the guards, of intellect and reason. Leaving me at a loss for words to express my feelings. Deep in my heart.— Tracy Chapman
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.— William Faulkner
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.— Ernest Hemingway
Some words when spoken can’t be taken back.— Pearl Jam
work
Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.— Anonymous
world
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.— Ernest Hemingway
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.— David Starr Jordan
Any people anywhere, being inclined to having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.— Abraham Lincoln
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas … that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.— Michel Foucault
Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.— Franklin P. Jones
The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.— Ernest Hemingway
worrying
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.— Epictetus
worth
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.— Benjamin Franklin
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.— George Bernard Shaw
writers
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.— Ernest Hemingway
Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people – which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.— Erica Jong
How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?— Erica Jong
In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but then when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced for all the wrong reasons.— Erica Jong
It’s for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before.— Erica Jong
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.— W. Somerset Maugham
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.— Virginia Woolf
writing
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.— Benjamin Franklin
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.— Ernest Hemingway
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.— Ernest Hemingway
His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.— Samuel Beckett
How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?— Erica Jong
In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but then when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced for all the wrong reasons.— Erica Jong
It’s for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before.— Erica Jong
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.— W. Somerset Maugham
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.— Virginia Woolf
wrong
Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery of which, during the first half of our time, we get a sight of the right side, and during the second half, the wrong. The wrong is not as pretty, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together [to make the pattern].— Arthur Schopenhauer
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.— Ayn Rand
Love is patient, love is kind.— 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
Love all, trust a few,— William Shakespeare
Do wrong to none.
years
The years tell us much that the days never knew.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
yesterday
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hand and hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.— John Wayne
youth
You make every day feel like kindergarten.— Natural Born Killers