Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea?
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.
—George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)
Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)
Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.
—A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Indian Head of State, Scientist)
Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.
—Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)
More than anything else, I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)
To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)
History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.
—Robert Penn Warren (American Novelist, Poet)
I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)
The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.
—Susan Sontag (American Writer, Philosopher)
The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-American Actor, Politician)
The virtuous (when injured) grieve not so much for their own pain as for the loss of happiness incurred by their injurers.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)