Archives for September 2014

If I could choose what of all things would be at the same time the most delightful and useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for this makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all earthly ones vanish; throws over the decay of existence the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death; makes even torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of the future, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.
—Humphry Davy (British Chemist)

Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers and of love for our posterity.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
—Nikos Kazantzakis (German Greek Philosopher)

Unhappy is the man who is not so much dissatisfied with what he has as with what the other fellow possesses.
—Chauncey Depew (American Businessperson)

This is all you have. This is not a dry run. This is your life. If you want to fritter it away with your fears, then you will fritter it away, but you won’t get it back later.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them.
—Bert Williams

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.
—Katherine Paterson (American Novelist)

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world’s greatest events are not produced, they happen.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

I … know what I do, and am unmoved by men’s blame, or their praise either.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

So much to do, so little done, such things to be.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

This world is a dream within a dream; and as we grow older, each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks, from childhood; the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as visionary; and the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream. Death the last sleep? No! It is the last and final awakening!
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Theater Critic)

Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.
—Herbert Hoover (American Head of State)

When I hear somebody sigh, “Life is hard,” I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
—Isaac Watts (English Hymn writer)

He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Continuous, unflagging effort, persistence and determination will win. Let not the man be discouraged who has these.
—James Whitcomb Riley (American Children’s Books Writer)

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
—Margaret Mead (American Anthropologist)

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

The good days weren’t really so good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
—Billy Joel (American Singer)

Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that’s more productive.
—Donald Trump (American Businessperson, Head of State)

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

There are three stages in a person’s life, birth, their life and death. They are not conscious of birth submit to death and forget to live.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
—Hubert Humphrey (American Head of State)

Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.
—Jean de La Bruyere