Archives for May 2014

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

I hate to lose more than I love to win.
—Jimmy Connors (American Sportsperson)

Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.
—William Temple

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Head of State)

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
—Richard Branson (British Entrepreneur)

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

Adults are obsolete children.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love, do not require coupons.
—Captain George T. Hewitt

With most people, unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.—Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.
—Aaron Burr

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
—Bernard Berenson (Russian-born American Art Historian)

The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
—George Horace Lorimer (American Editor)

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
—Polybius

Too much is unwholesome.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
—John Nuveen

Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

That which costs little is less valued.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn’t willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that … That was all wrong.
—Raquel Welch (American Actor)

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere

A bitter and perplexed, “What shall I do?” is worse to man than worst necessity.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at other times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.
—John Kotter (American Academic)

What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.
—Jesse Jackson (American Baptist Civil Rights Activist)

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
—William Temple

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)

Never look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.
—Northrop Frye

As you think, so shall you become.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.
—Cullen Hightower (American Humorist)

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable … we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
—John Marshall (American Judge)

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, a man consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A mother who is really a mother is never free.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)