Archives for July 2022

Power is the ability to do good things for others.
—Brooke Astor (American Writer, Philanthropist)

It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, “Don’t play like me, play like you.”
—Eric Clapton (British Musician)

Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity, not a threat.
—Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (British Prince)

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)

With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (Spanish Poet)

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)

Frustrated love has been the incentive for many great works.
—John Michell (English Esotericist, New Age Writer)

The best match in the world will not light a candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared.
—Algernon Blackwood (English Novelist)

No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.
—James K. Polk (President of America)

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (English Writer, Politician)

In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears.
—Constance Rourke (American Historian)

Many people feel empty, a world that seemed so strong just collapsed. Forty years have been wasted on stupid strife for the sake of an unsuccessful experiment. The values gathered together have vanished, the strategies for survival have become ridiculous. And so forty years of our lives have become a story, a bad anecdote. But it may be possible to remember these adventures with a kind of irony.
—Gyorgy Konrad (Hungarian Novelist, Essayist)

I may have faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them.
—Jimmy Hoffa (American Labor Leader)

Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.
—C. Everett Koop (American Physician)

Hard as it may appear in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
—Thomas Robert Malthus (English Political Economist)

Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me.
—Zane Grey (American Novelist)

To understand is to perceive patterns.
—Isaiah Berlin (British Philosopher, Historian)

Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.
—A. J. Liebling (American Journalist)

One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is the assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

Don’t believe that winning is really everything. It’s more important to stand for something. If you don’t stand for something, what do you win?
—Lane Kirkland (American Labor Leader)

Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was.
—John O’Donohue (Irish Philosopher, Priest)

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?
—Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russian Novelist)

If you’re not happy every morning when you get up, leave for work, or start to work at home—if you’re not enthusiastic about doing that, you’re not going to be successful.
—Donald M. Kendall (American Businessman)

All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac (American Novelist, Poet)

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.
—Fidel Castro (Cuban Political Leader)

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.
—Dolores Ibarruri (Spanish Communist Leader)

The moment of enlightenment is when a person’s dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.
—Vic Braden (American Sportsperson)

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
—Elizabeth Wurtzel (American Writer, Journalist)