It’s better to live as your own man than as a fool in someone else’s dream.
—Martin Landau (American Actor)
The superior man is he who develops in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual, and physical nature. This should be the end at which men of all classes should aim, and it is this only which constitutes real greatness.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)
When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
—Shirley Chisholm (American Politician)
Like a stone That rolls down a hill, I have come to this day.
—Takuboku Ishikawa (Japanese Poet)
The magnificent and the ridiculous are so close that they touch.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (French Man of Letters)
Faith assuages, guides, restores.
—Arthur Rimbaud (French Poet)
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)
Introspect daily, detect diligently, negate ruthlessly.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher)
Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.
—Hans Morgenthau (American Political Scientist)
It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions, and actions of others.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Theologian, Poet)
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
—Rachel Carson (American Biologist)
It is with life just as with swimming; that man is the most expert who is the most disengaged from all encumbrances.
—Apuleius (Roman Prose Writer)
Life is neither a good nor an evil, but simply the scene of good and evil.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)
I confess that I cannot understand how we can plot, lie, cheat and commit murder abroad and remain humane, honorable, trustworthy and trusted at home.
—Archibald Cox (American Lawyer)
The will to prepare is more important that the will to win.
—LaVell Edwards (American Football Coach)
Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
—Harold Bloom (American Literary Critic, Author)
Life is one long jubilee.
—Ira Gershwin (American Lyricist)