Samuel Butler

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

Samuel Butler

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Samuel Butler

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Samuel Butler

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

Samuel Butler

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

Samuel Butler

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Samuel Butler

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Samuel Butler

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Samuel Butler

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

Samuel Butler

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

Samuel Butler

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Samuel Butler

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

Samuel Butler

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Samuel Butler

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Samuel Butler

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Samuel Butler

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Samuel Butler

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

Samuel Butler

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

Samuel Butler

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Samuel Butler

Soren Kierkegaard

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.

Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

Soren Kierkegaard

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Soren Kierkegaard

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

Soren Kierkegaard

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

Soren Kierkegaard

Be that self which one truly is.

Soren Kierkegaard

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Soren Kierkegaard

Don't forget to love yourself.

Soren Kierkegaard

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

Soren Kierkegaard

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Soren Kierkegaard

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Soren Kierkegaard

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

Soren Kierkegaard

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Soren Kierkegaard

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

Soren Kierkegaard

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Soren Kierkegaard

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

Soren Kierkegaard

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

Soren Kierkegaard

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Soren Kierkegaard

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.

Soren Kierkegaard

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

Soren Kierkegaard

Walter Wriston

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

Walter Wriston

Judgment comes from experience - and experience comes from bad judgment.

Walter Wriston

Karl Kraus

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Karl Kraus

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

Karl Kraus

A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!

Karl Kraus

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.

Karl Kraus

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Karl Kraus

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

Karl Kraus

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Karl Kraus

Christian morality prefers remorse to precede lust, and then lust not to follow.

Karl Kraus

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

Karl Kraus

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.

Karl Kraus

Curses on the law! Most of my fellow citizens are the sorry consequences of uncommitted abortions.

Karl Kraus

Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.

Karl Kraus

I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am.

Karl Kraus

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.

Karl Kraus

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

Karl Kraus

He who does without the praise of the crowd will not deny himself an opportunity to be his own adherent.

Karl Kraus

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Karl Kraus

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

Karl Kraus

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?

Karl Kraus

Do not learn more than you absolutely need to get through life.

Karl Kraus

Sanford I. Weill

A lot of people at Shearson ended up making a lot of money because they had stock or stock options. Their kids were able to go to college, and it changed a lot of people's lives.

Sanford I. Weill

From the business point of view, always encouraging the people in our company to own stock in the company, and if we're going to build something great, to have a lot of people share in the benefits of that greatness.

Sanford I. Weill

And I thought I'd always like some form of business, I didn't know what kind of business I'd go in.

Sanford I. Weill

And learn that when you do make a mistake, you'll surface that mistake so you can get it corrected, rather than trying to hide it and bury it, and it becomes a much bigger mistake, and maybe a fatal mistake.

Sanford I. Weill

And when we used to play and fight in the streets in Brooklyn and I would get hurt or something, my mother would always come out and save me. So that sort of postponed the inevitable about getting a good beating, without having somebody to come and save you.

Sanford I. Weill

I believe in giving back very strongly.

Sanford I. Weill

Details create the big picture.

Sanford I. Weill

I read a lot, but I read about the areas that I'm interested in.

Sanford I. Weill

I remember the mentoring experiences of some teachers that I had, like a second term home room teacher in public school that really was very helpful to me.

Sanford I. Weill

I think life is sort of like a competition, whether it's in sports, or it's achieving in school, or it's achieving good relationships with people. And competition is a little bit of what it's all about.

Sanford I. Weill

And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City.

Sanford I. Weill

I think we are a product of all our experiences.

Sanford I. Weill

I was sort of a sissy as a little kid.

Sanford I. Weill

I wonder how many people would have thought at the end of World War II that the capitalist system would be one that was meeting the challenges and making things better for people as we approach the 21st century.

Sanford I. Weill

I would say that my parents were supportive of me.

Sanford I. Weill

I've been involved with Carnegie Hall for the last 13 years, and Chairman for the last six. I feel really good about what we've done growing our educational programs there, building a board that has made Carnegie Hall really a world-class institution.

Sanford I. Weill

I'm not as involved in every little thing as I used to be.

Sanford I. Weill

I think Latin has some logic to it and there was a discipline.

Sanford I. Weill

I've had a terrific life, from building one company to be the second largest company in the securities industry and merging that into American Express, and becoming president of that company.

Sanford I. Weill

I think the American Dream says that anything can happen if you work hard enough at it and are persistent, and have some ability. The sky is the limit to what you can build, and what can happen to you and your family.

Sanford I. Weill

Rita Mae Brown

A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.

Rita Mae Brown

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

Rita Mae Brown

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

Rita Mae Brown

As a woman, I find it very embarrassing to be in a meeting and realize I'm the only one in the room with balls.

Rita Mae Brown

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Rita Mae Brown

Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there.

Rita Mae Brown

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.

Rita Mae Brown

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

Rita Mae Brown

Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn't sign your name you'd have to pay cash.

Rita Mae Brown

Every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.

Rita Mae Brown

I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

Rita Mae Brown

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.

Rita Mae Brown

Humor comes from self-confidence.

Rita Mae Brown

I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.

Rita Mae Brown

I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.

Rita Mae Brown

Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash.

Rita Mae Brown

I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.

Rita Mae Brown

If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle.

Rita Mae Brown

I became a lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate.

Rita Mae Brown

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

Rita Mae Brown

Fred Brooks

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Fred Brooks

Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.

Fred Brooks

Randolph Bourne

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing.

Randolph Bourne

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Randolph Bourne

Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

Randolph Bourne

A. E. Housman

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

A. E. Housman

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

A. E. Housman

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

A. E. Housman

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

A. E. Housman

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

A. E. Housman

Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

A. E. Housman

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Housman

I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

A. E. Housman

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

A. E. Housman

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

A. E. Housman

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

A. E. Housman

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

A. E. Housman

The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me.

A. E. Housman

Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.

A. E. Housman

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

A. E. Housman

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

A. E. Housman

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

A. E. Housman

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

A. E. Housman

Franklin P. Jones

Love doesn't make the word go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

Franklin P. Jones

All women should know how to take care of children. Most of them will have a husband some day.

Franklin P. Jones

Anybody who finds it easy to make money on the horses is probably in the dog food business.

Franklin P. Jones

A fanatic is one who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not.

Franklin P. Jones

Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid.

Franklin P. Jones

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.

Franklin P. Jones

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Franklin P. Jones

Experience is that marvelous thing that enable you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Franklin P. Jones

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

Franklin P. Jones

Anybody who thinks talk is cheap should get some legal advice.

Franklin P. Jones

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.

Franklin P. Jones

Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job.

Franklin P. Jones

Sex is a two-way treat.

Franklin P. Jones

It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon; which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.

Franklin P. Jones

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values - and witnesses.

Franklin P. Jones

Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbor's noisy party than being there.

Franklin P. Jones

One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it.

Franklin P. Jones

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

Franklin P. Jones

One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.

Franklin P. Jones

Julius Caesar

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Julius Caesar

Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Julius Caesar

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

Julius Caesar

It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.

Julius Caesar

Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.

Julius Caesar

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

Julius Caesar

Experience is the teacher of all things.

Julius Caesar

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

Julius Caesar

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

Julius Caesar

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

Julius Caesar

As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can.

Julius Caesar

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

Julius Caesar

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.

Julius Caesar

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Julius Caesar

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

Julius Caesar

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

Julius Caesar

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

Julius Caesar

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Julius Caesar

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

Julius Caesar

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

Julius Caesar

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

Julius Caesar

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

Julius Caesar

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Julius Caesar

Alphonse de Lamartine

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

Alphonse de Lamartine

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

Alphonse de Lamartine

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

Alphonse de Lamartine

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

Alphonse de Lamartine

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

Alphonse de Lamartine

There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

Alphonse de Lamartine

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Jake Roberts

Every moment is an experience.

Jake Roberts

A child's hope is that your father comes riding in on that white stallion and saves them. You can't make somebody love you the way you want them to love you, it's not a Leave it to Beaver type world. This isn't television. Life's a lot more cruel than that.

Jake Roberts

Miserable is a good thing, though. If you start the day miserable, nobody else can screw up your day.

Jake Roberts

I did it the stupid way, through trial and error.

Jake Roberts

It's the sad thing about entertainment, it's not always about who is the best.

Jake Roberts

Jake Roberts has a hard enough time being Jake Roberts. The truth is a brutal thing, I just hope that the kids take the time to learn about each of the wrestlers in the game, and if the kids can learn from our mistakes, that would make me a happy man.

Jake Roberts

You know what, when you screw up in the ring, it's so embarrassing.

Jake Roberts

The snake will always bite back.

Jake Roberts

I went to visit my father to tell him that I was going to go to college and become an architect - that was my dream. I was like, yeah I graduated from school, but it's not like you showed up for that. But all he was worried about is whether or not I wanted money from him.

Jake Roberts

Pete Seeger

Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger

Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent.

Pete Seeger

But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.

Pete Seeger

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger

Historically, I believe I was correct in refusing to answer their questions.

Pete Seeger

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

Pete Seeger

I feel that my whole life is a contribution.

Pete Seeger

I fought for peace in the fifties.

Pete Seeger

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

Pete Seeger

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life.

Pete Seeger

I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

Pete Seeger

I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax.

Pete Seeger

One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

Pete Seeger

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

Pete Seeger

I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.

Pete Seeger

I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.

Pete Seeger

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches.

Pete Seeger

I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me.

Pete Seeger

I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.

Pete Seeger

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Pete Seeger

Clarence Day

The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.

Clarence Day

If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any.

Clarence Day

Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.

Clarence Day

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

Clarence Day

If you don't go to other men funerals they won't go to yours.

Clarence Day

Ants are good citizens, they place group interests first.

Clarence Day

A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health.

Clarence Day

Reason is the servant of instinct.

Clarence Day

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

Clarence Day

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.

Clarence Day

Too many moralists begin with a dislike of reality.

Clarence Day

We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.

Clarence Day

You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.

Clarence Day

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

Clarence Day

Abigail Van Buren

Never give a golfer an ultimatum unless you're prepared to lose.

Abigail Van Buren

If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters.

Abigail Van Buren

If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.

Abigail Van Buren

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Abigail Van Buren

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires.

Abigail Van Buren

Abigail Van Buren

Loneliness is the ultimate poverty.

Abigail Van Buren

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who walk into a room and say, "There you are" and those who say, "Here I am"

Abigail Van Buren

True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance.

Abigail Van Buren

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.

Abigail Van Buren

Religion, like water, may be free, but when they pipe it to you, you've got to help pay for piping. And the Piper!

Abigail Van Buren

It is a sad commentary of our times when our young must seek advice and counsel from "Dear Abby" instead of going to Mom and Dad.

Abigail Van Buren

It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can't speak for my twin sister.

The less you talk, the more you're listened to.

Abigail Van Buren

Ralph Marston

Every day you spend drifting away from your goals is a waste not only of that day, but also of the additional day it takes to regain lost ground.

Ralph Marston

Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.

Ralph Marston

Beset by a difficult problem? Now is your chance to shine. Pick yourself up, get to work and get triumphantly through it.

Ralph Marston

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

Ralph Marston

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

Ralph Marston

Rest when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.

Ralph Marston

Success in any endeavor depends on the degree to which it is an expression of your true self.

Ralph Marston

Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.

Ralph Marston

It doesn't matter how much you want. What really matters is how much you want it. The extent and complexity of the problem does not matter was much as does the willingness to solve it.

Ralph Marston

The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.

Ralph Marston

Welcome those big, sticky, complicated problems. In them are your most powerful opportunities.

Ralph Marston

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

Ralph Marston

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

Ralph Marston

Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.

Ralph Marston

You've done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.

Ralph Marston

Don Marquis

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.

Don Marquis

A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?

Don Marquis

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Don Marquis

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

Don Marquis

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.

Don Marquis

I would rather start a family than finish one.

Don Marquis

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Don Marquis

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Don Marquis

Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.

Don Marquis

By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.

Don Marquis

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Don Marquis

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

Don Marquis

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

Don Marquis

Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.

Don Marquis

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

Don Marquis

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

Don Marquis

I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

Don Marquis

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

Don Marquis

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

Don Marquis

An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.

Don Marquis

A. R. Ammons

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

A. R. Ammons

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

A. R. Ammons

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

A. R. Ammons

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.

A. R. Ammons

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

A. R. Ammons

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

A. R. Ammons

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

A. R. Ammons

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

A. R. Ammons

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

A. R. Ammons

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.

A. R. Ammons

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.

A. R. Ammons

I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.

A. R. Ammons

If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.

A. R. Ammons

If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.

A. R. Ammons

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

A. R. Ammons

Only silence perfects silence.

A. R. Ammons

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

A. R. Ammons

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

A. R. Ammons

In nature there are few sharp lines.

A. R. Ammons

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

A. R. Ammons

Jim Hodges

For a while, I thought a lot about lineage. Where do I belong? Who am I standing next to?

Jim Hodges

I was feeling a strong need to change, grow, and break with particular things that were going on in my life and my history, and the material was the perfect answer for that.

Jim Hodges

However, some of my work is very subtle, and one should expect very subtle reactions to it.

Jim Hodges

I move very slowly. It's usually material first. I sit with the material for a long time.

Jim Hodges

As a viewer, my own work elicits strong emotional reaction from me.

Jim Hodges

But most people don't come up to me and express a lot of emotion.

Jim Hodges

Color is an intense experience on its own.

Jim Hodges

Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.

Jim Hodges

I think that some works are more accessible than others.

Jim Hodges

I think young people have a wonderful reaction to color because it's not screwed up by too many references.

Jim Hodges

I was trying to write an autobiography using prints and patterns that reference emotional, psychological, and personal development in my work, as a person growing up, figuring out who I was. I used fabrics to stand in for occurrences.

Jim Hodges

I work from a personal place, and the work has personal meaning for me.

Jim Hodges

I'm an average person.

Jim Hodges

There is a broad range of reaction to the work, as there is a broad range of work I make.

Jim Hodges

When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process.

Jim Hodges

It's as if I were collaborating with myself, revealing my relationship to the material. My hand would make the drawing. Then my mouth would transmit it.

Jim Hodges

Landscape is a piece that is emotional and psychological.

Jim Hodges

My latest works are these things with light bulbs.

Jim Hodges

Often, I work out of my work. One work takes me to the next thing.

Jim Hodges

I wasn't interested in holding onto the evidence of things.

Jim Hodges

Wallis Simpson

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.

Wallis Simpson

I have always had the courage for the new things that life sometimes offers.

Wallis Simpson

I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world because they will say that I could have prevented it.

Wallis Simpson

I hate this place. I shall hate it to my grave.

Wallis Simpson

For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.

Wallis Simpson

Forgive me for not writing but this man is exhausting.

Wallis Simpson

I look a hundred and weigh 110 - you won't love me when you see the wreck England has made me.

Wallis Simpson

You can never be too rich or too thin.

Wallis Simpson

Never explain, never complain.

Wallis Simpson

PS: It's all gossip about the prince. I'm not in the habit of taking my girlfriends' beaux.

Wallis Simpson

I never make a trip to the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascinating than any fashion salon.

Wallis Simpson

Flannery O'Connor

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

Flannery O'Connor

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

Flannery O'Connor

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

Flannery O'Connor

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

Flannery O'Connor

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

Flannery O'Connor

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

Flannery O'Connor

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

Flannery O'Connor

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

Flannery O'Connor

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Flannery O'Connor

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

Flannery O'Connor

It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

Flannery O'Connor

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

Flannery O'Connor

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

Flannery O'Connor

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Flannery O'Connor

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor

The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

Flannery O'Connor

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Flannery O'Connor

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

Flannery O'Connor

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

Flannery O'Connor

Jan Peter Balkenende

Bitter experience has taught us how fundamental our values are and how great the mission they represent.

Jan Peter Balkenende

Day after day we must remember we can take freedom for granted. Day after day we must keep the bond between freedom and other values in mind.

Jan Peter Balkenende

Freedom is a universal value.

Jan Peter Balkenende

The horrors of the Second World War, the chilling winds of the Cold War and the crushing weight of the Iron Curtain are little more than fading memories. Ideals that once commanded great loyalty are now taken for granted.

Jan Peter Balkenende

We can prevent Europe from becoming a spiritless machine that, in the end, grinds to a halt.

Jan Peter Balkenende

Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are.

Jan Peter Balkenende

The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given.

Jan Peter Balkenende

Terrorism is an evil that threatens all the countries in Europe. Vigorous cooperation in the European Union and worldwide is crucial in order to meet this evil head on.

Jan Peter Balkenende

Heinrich Heine

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

Heinrich Heine

Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.

Heinrich Heine

Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.

Heinrich Heine

Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.

Heinrich Heine

Atheism is the last word of theism.

Heinrich Heine

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.

Heinrich Heine

God will forgive me; that's his business.

Heinrich Heine

God will forgive me. It's his job.

Heinrich Heine

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.

Heinrich Heine

It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of - another Jew?

Heinrich Heine

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.

Heinrich Heine

In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.

Heinrich Heine

Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.

Heinrich Heine

I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.

Heinrich Heine

He only profits from praise who values criticism.

Heinrich Heine

I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

Heinrich Heine

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Heinrich Heine

It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.

Heinrich Heine

I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.

Heinrich Heine

I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.

Heinrich Heine

Joseph Roux

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.

Joseph Roux

It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.

Joseph Roux

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Joseph Roux

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Joseph Roux

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

Joseph Roux

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

Joseph Roux

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

Joseph Roux

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

Joseph Roux

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

Joseph Roux

When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing.

Joseph Roux

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions.

Joseph Roux

Our experience is composed rather of illusions that of wisdom acquired.

Joseph Roux

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

Joseph Roux

The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.

Joseph Roux

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.

Joseph Roux

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

Joseph Roux

Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know.

Joseph Roux

John Legend

Experience is a great teacher.

John Legend

I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.

John Legend

I want to move people.

John Legend

I played classical as a kid.

John Legend

I was always the front man for what I was doing from when I was 6.

John Legend

Now that I'm coming out with my own record people can see I'm a solo artist.

John Legend

The best training is to play by ear: trial by fire.

John Legend

In the 1970s, for all the Stevie Wonders, I'm sure there were five artists that were making forgettable music.

John Legend

John legend is a nickname that somebody started calling me a while ago and part of it is 'cos I sound like an old man when I sing.

John Legend

My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.

John Legend

Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Mark Twain

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Mark Twain

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Mark Twain

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Mark Twain

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

Mark Twain

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Mark Twain

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Mark Twain

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Mark Twain

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Mark Twain

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Mark Twain

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Mark Twain

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

Mark Twain

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Mark Twain

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

Mark Twain

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

Mark Twain

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain