Archives for September 2019

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

Real life is, to most men … a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Not what you say about yourself, but what others say.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

No matter how big a house you have or how slick a car you drive, the only thing you can take with you at the end of your life is your conscience.
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

A man that speaks too much, and museth but little, wasteth his mind in words, and is counted a fool among men.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

Let thy words be few.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.
—Alfred de Musset (French Poet, Playwright)

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

Rumor grows as it goes.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

There is only one journey: going inside yourself.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
—Richard Dawkins (British Ethologist, Atheist)

Some age, others mature.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

I know I’m no glamour girl, and it’s not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I’ve got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.
—Ella Fitzgerald (American Singer, Composer)

There are three principles in a man’s being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don’t do what I say.
—Martin Buber (Austrian Jewish Philosopher)

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

He who approves evil is guilty of it.
—Indian Proverb

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world’s people share the benefits of globalization.
—Kofi Annan (Ghanaian International Diplomat)

Happy is he who can give himself up.
—Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian Novelist)

In our time, when such threatening forces of deavage are at work, splitting peoples, individuals and atoms, it is doubly necessary that those which unite and hold together should become effective; for life is founded on the harmonious interplay of masculine and feminine forces, within the individual human being as well as without. Bringing these opposites into union is one of the most important tasks of present-day psychotherapy.
—Emma Jung (Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author)

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize… the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (French Anthropologist)

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?
—William Morris (British Artist, Author)

Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so.
—Charles Du Bos (French Literary Critic)

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)

The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead.
—Hafez (Persian Poet)

There are some people whom you have in life who have the capacity for real, passionate commitment to something, and sometimes you may be passionately committed to the same thing.
—Warren Beatty (American Actor)

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The will to act is a renewable resource.
—Al Gore (American Politician, Environmentalist )

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.
—Alfred Nobel (Swedish Inventor, Humanitarian)

What orators lack in depth, they make up to you in length.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.
—Steffi Graf (German Tennis Player)

It’s [beauty] a kind of radiance. People who possess a true inner beauty, their eyes are a little brighter, their skin a little more dewy. They vibrate at a different frequency.
—Cameron Diaz (American Actress)

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
—Jackie Collins (English Romance Novelist)

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It’s often said that the digital revolution that puts a TV camera in everyone’s hands makes everyone a filmmaker. It’s [nonsense]. What makes someone a filmmaker is somebody who knows how to tell a story and telling a story.
—Ken Burns (American Documentary Filmmaker)

Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.
—Emmeline Pankhurst (British Suffragist)

Whenever possible, it is always good to act in kindness. It is always possible.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

As for food, half of my friends have dug their graves with their teeth.
—Chauncey Depew (American Lawyer, Politician)

Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
—John Chrysostom (Archbishop of Constantinople)

Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (German Poet, Critic, Scholar)

To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
—Abraham Cowley (English Poet)

Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.
—Friedrich Hayek (British Economist, Social Philosopher)

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Physicist)

Nothing is easier than to judge what has substance and quality; to comprehend it is harder; and what is hardest is to combine both functions and produce an account of it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German Philosopher )

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
—Margaret Fuller (American Journalist, Feminist)

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
—Heraclitus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed but is delayed in the execution.
—The Panchatantra (Indian Collection of Fables)

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

The real secret to success is enthusiasm.
—Walter Chrysler (American Engineer, Industrialist)

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence (British Soldier, Writer)

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
—William C. Durant (American Industrialist)

I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash (American Comic Poet)

Don’t give up. Defend your ideas, but be flexible. Success seldom comes in exactly the form you imagine.
—Martha Stewart (American Businesswoman)

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out of the impossible.
—Max Weber (German Sociologist)

When you talk with famous scholars, the best thing is to pretend that occasionally you do not quite understand them. If you understand too little, you will be despised; if you understand too much, you will be disliked; if you just fail occasionally to understand them you will suit each other very well.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
—Athenaeus (Greek Grammarian, Author)

Regrets and recriminations only hurt your soul.
—Armand Hammer (American Entrepreneur, Businessman)

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.
—Muhammad Ali (American Sportsperson)

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

For those trying to protect the past, it is a way of retaining power, status, money, a way a life, predictability, comfort, control, and a bunch of other things like that. It is a struggle against the inevitability of change.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty—one moment thinking “perhaps” and the next moment thinking “I don’t know”—will never get desired results.
—Ernest Holmes (American New Thought Writer)