Nagesh Belludi

Love imposes obligations and these are constant. An intermittent lover is no use to a person of dignity and courage.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Yet we may constantly do more in what we are than in what we do. We may serve better in the lives we live than in the best service we ever give. The memory of that should bring rest to your spirit when a bit tired, and may be disheartened because tired.
—Samuel Dickey Gordon (American Evangelical Author)

Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.
—Hanif Kureishi (British Novelist, Screenwriter)

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
—Arthur Rimbaud (French Poet)

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.
—Anne Rice (American Author)

Men are only too ready to be swayed by senseless passion.
—John Macquarrie (British Theologian)

Give it away to get it back. There is a wonderful, almost mystical, law of nature that says three of the things we want most—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained when we give them to others.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope; a slight change, and all patterns and configurations alter.
—Sharon Salzberg (Buddhist Teacher)

The man that makes a character, makes foes.
—Edward Young (English Poet)

I count false words the foulest plague of all.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the furies to agitate and torment it.—Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past and terrors of the future, these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the minds of the impious.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

The most intangible, and therefore the worst kind of a lie, is a half-truth.—This is the peculiar device of the “conscientious” detractor.
—Washington Allston (American Artist, Writer)

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
—Isaac D’Israeli (English Writer, Scholar)

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist’s imaginative life there is purpose. … Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
—Sherwood Anderson (American Fiction Writer)

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
—George Bancroft (American Historian)

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any act of Parliament.
—A. P. Herbert (English Humorist, Politician)

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.
—James Salter (American Fiction Writer)

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Once we recognize the fact that every individual is a treasury of hidden and unsuspected qualities, our lives become richer, our judgment better, and our world is more right. It is not love that is blind, it is only the unnoticed eye that cannot see the real qualities of people.
—Charles H. Percy (American Businessperson)

Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
—May Sarton (American Children’s Books Writer)

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

We take love for granted. We assume we are all perfect lovers and all we need do is wait and our love will grow and blossom as readily as a flower in spring. Not so. Love doesn’t grow unless we do. It takes patience, knowledge, experience, determination, and every positive trait we possess. In addition, love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination.
—Paul Dirac (English Theoretical Physicist)

Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hungarian-American Psychologist)

Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory.
—Frederick William Faber (British Hymn Writer)