Archives for March 2019

When the ancients said a work well begun was half done, they meant to impress the importance of always endeavoring to make a good beginning.
—Polybius (Greek Historian)

Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)

We now have access to so much information that we can find support for any prejudice or opinion.
—David Suzuki (Canadian Scientist, Environmental Activist)

If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.
—Harriet Tubman (American Abolitionist)

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

The weaker partner in a marriage is the one who loves the most.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.
—Kurt Vonnegut (American Novelist)

Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Scientist)

Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow.
—James Dean (American Film Actor)

Thank you for leaving us alone but giving us enough attention to boost our egos.
—Mick Jagger (English Rock Musician)

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
—Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

When the press is the echo of sages and reformers, it works well; when it is the echo of turbulent cynics, it merely feeds political excitement.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (French Poet, Politician, Historian)

I have all reverence for principles which grow out of sentiments; but as to sentiments which grow out of principles, you shall scarcely build a house of cards thereon.
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Not all who wander are lost.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (British Philologist, Writer)

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
—V. S. Naipaul (Trinidadian-British Writer)

Silence is one great art of conversation.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.
—Guy de Maupassant (French Short-story Writer)

The features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

While thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.
—Richard Hooker (English Theologian, Political Theorist)

No one will tell a tale of scandal, except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to check and rebuke the detracting tongue, by showing that you do not listen to it but with displeasure.
—Jerome (Greek Priest)

Cold hearts can find warm words.
—Tibetan Proverb

You know, the more you can meet people from different walks of life, the better it is for you. I think the more you can create situations and experiences that give you new perspective, the better.
—Michelle Pfeiffer (American Film Actress)

Nothing leaders do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
—Lawrence Bossidy (American Business Executive)

Want and sorrow are the wages that folly earns for itself, and they are generally paid.
—Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (German Poet)

It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.
—Herb Kelleher (American Entrepreneur)

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.
—Katherine Mansfield (British Author)

Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches.
—Lucretius (Roman Epicurean Philosopher)

We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.
—Bill Clinton (American Head of State)

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
—Edward de Bono (British Psychologist, Writer )

Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
—Andre Maurois (French Novelist, Biographer)

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
—Arthur Koestler (British Writer, Journalist)

You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can believe that being negative is clever and being cynical is fashionable. You have a choice.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (American Head of State)

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
—Desmond Tutu (South African Clergyman)

Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (American Poetaster, Author)

Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts.
—George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (British Statesman, Writer)

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.
—Harold S. Geneen (American Businessman)

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
—Milan Kundera (Czech Novelist)

The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.
—Alfred Adler (Austrian Psychiatrist)

I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word—politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
—Emma Thompson (British Actress, Screenwriter)

Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard.—It is in insignificant matters, and in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others, and denies nothing to itself.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet, Critic)

The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy (Indian Art Historian)

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare.
—Yoshida Kenko (Japanese Poet)

I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

Art, as far as it has the ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, so that art must be, as it were, a descendant of God.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet, Philosopher)

The confidence we have in ourselves arises in a great measure from that which we have in others.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.
—Akira Kurosawa (Japanese Film Director)

Such is the force of envy and ill-nature, that the failings of good men are more published to the world than their good deeds; and one fault of a well-deserving man shall meet with more reproaches than all his virtues will with praise.
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (American Poet, Playwright)

And for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his freedom, may seem to debase him… by investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare.
—Theodore Schultz (American Economist)

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you’re looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

It’s been said that every institution is nothing but the extended shadow of one person.
—Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (American Businessman)

Patients who can get even part of the way to acknowledging their mortality ultimately do themselves an untold favor.
—Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist, Writer)

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.
—Judy Garland (American Actress, Singer)

He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
—Sinclair Lewis (American Novelist)

Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.
—Drew Barrymore (American Film Actress)

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
—James Allen (British Self-Help Author)

Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine were taken away.
—Anaxagoras (Greek Philosopher)

Losses have propelled me to even bigger places, so I understand the importance of losing. You can never get complacent because a loss is always around the corner. It’s in any game that you’re in—a business game or whatever—you can’t get complacent.
—Venus Williams (American Tennis Player)

A country’s greatness lies in its undying ideals of love and sacrifice that inspire the mothers of the race.
—Sarojini Naidu (Indian Feminist, Poet)

I did not think; I investigated.
—Wilhelm Roentgen (German Physicist)

Whoever honors his own sect and disparages another man’s whether from blind loyalty or with the intention of showing his own sect in a favorable light, does his own sect the greatest possible harm. Concord is best, with each hearing and respecting the other’s teachings.
—Ashoka (Emperor of India, Patron of Buddhism)

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
—Guy Debord (French Philosopher)

Perhaps time’s definition of coal is the diamond.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Just because you can prove someone wrong, doesn’t mean you should.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.
—Yoko Ono (Japanese Artist, Musician)

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
—John Maynard Keynes (English Economist)

Probably no greater honor can come to any man than the respect of his colleagues.
—Cary Grant (British-American Film Actor)

Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Facts by themselves are not great or small; it is the forces behind them that give them their real stature. Facts have value in so far as they are significant—significant of forces, of dynamic possibilities that work out in and through them. Facts in their outward form may even directly contradict the very forces that manifest through them or are embodied in them.
—Nolini Kanta Gupta (Indian Hindu Revolutionary)

Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you’re telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.
—Bill Cosby (American Actor)

Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
—William James (American Philosopher)