The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)
Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)
Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)
The superior man does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)
Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there’s no such thing as exactly enough.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)
All art is but imitation of nature.
—Seneca the Elder (Marcus Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Rhetorician)
Example has more followers than reason.—We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.—A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.
—Christian Nestell Bovee
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter … a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
—Henri Matisse
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
—Herbert Spencer (English Polymath)
The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)
Live in my heart and pay no rent.
—Samuel Lover (Irish Songwriter)
Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.
—David Letterman (American TV Personality)
Touched by beauty we enter the forefields of enlightenment. Flying higher and higher one may discover that there is nothing else but beauty. Isn’t it a pity that we’re not yet ready to keep it in permanent view?
—Hans Taeger