Archives for July 2014

Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

Out of difficulties grow miracles.
—Jean de La Bruyere

No padlock, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden so well as her own reserve.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can’t.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.
—P. T. Barnum (American Businessperson)

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.
—Sandra Day O’Connor

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.
—Philibert Joseph Roux (French Surgeon)

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things: money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humored, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich—that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline.
—Helen Hayes (American Actor)

All men are liable to error, and most men are … by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

I count life just a stuff to try the soul’s strength on.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

By the streets of “by and by,” one arrives at the house of “never.”
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
—William Ewart Gladstone (British Head of State)

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

He who has not faith in others shall find no faith in them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
—Steven Spielberg (American Film Director)

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence—beginning with one’s own.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for them that the bargain is a loss.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal (American Novelist)

What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)