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Nathan's Quote Archive

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The Quote Archive isn't overly likely to be updated much more, but it will stay here as long as there are quotes to use. Nothing on this page is necessarily the property of Nathan Williams. This material is used based on the tacit approval of its originators. If anything here is used in violation of copyright, please let me know and I will be happy to remove the quote from this page. Nothing contained on this page should be assumed to be in the public domain.

Quote Count: 588 as of 4 December 2003

"Strangers are just friends waiting to happen."

"Friendship is one soul in two bodies."

-Mencius

"Friends are God's way of taking care of us."

"My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life."

-Lee Iacocca

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

"The human body was designed by a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?"

"Humility isn't thinking less about yourself, it's thinking about yourself less."

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

-Dr. Seuss

"It's interesting that in all God's testing of Job, the one thing God doesn't take away is Job's wife."

"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."

-Einstein

"If I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting but I would decline, for life would no longer teach me anything."

-Alyson Jones

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

-Chinese proverb

"The true characteristic of free men is the nagging sensation that they are not so..."

-Graffito in Burling Library

"I think that the sky was made so that there would always be something beautiful out of reach."

-Brandon Olsen

"I would rather die with a sense of personal responsibility than live without one."

-Bill Maher

"Receiving is just as important as giving."

-In a fortune cookie

"I have come to the conclusion, in my own experience, that those who, no matter to what faith they belong, reverently study the teachings of other faiths, broaden their own instead of narrowing their hearts."

-Mohandas Gandhi

"It's not how long a man lives, but how well he uses the time alotted him."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove passes like an hour. That's relativity."

-Albert Einstein

"The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

-Niels Bohr

"We are what we pretend to be."

-Kurt Vonnegut

"Forgive, O God, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive thy great big one on me."

"A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down."

-Robert Benchley

"Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful."

-Ann Landers

"In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him."

-Dereke Bruce

"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person."

-Andrew A. Rooney

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

-Oscar Wilde

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

-Edmund Burke

"Beauty is skin deep. But how rich you are can last a long time."

"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important."

-T. S. Eliot

"A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds."

-Malcolm X

"The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you."

-Lady Astor

"Honest criticism is a hard thing to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."

-Franklin P. Jones

"In a world without walls and fences, we wouldn't need windows and gates."

-Endymion_

"You can observe a lot by watching."

-Yogi Berra

"There are limits to self-indulgence, none to self-restraint."

-Gandhi

"Luck is infatuated with the efficient."

-Moorish proverb

"Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented."

-Georges Braque

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."

-Frank Capra

"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

-Mark Twain

"The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say but what we are unable to say."

-Anais Nin

"I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian."

-Alexander Pope

"Walking isn't a lost art - one must, by some means, get to the garage."

-Evan Esar

"Outside a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."

-Groucho Marx

"People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there."

"The long run is what puts the tiger in the tank."

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."

-A. Whitney Brown

"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else."

-Lily Tomlin

"Why is is that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?"

-Lily Tomlin

"Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end."

-Jerry Seinfeld

"I've learned that either you control your attitude or you will be offered medication."

"Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people."

-Angela Carter

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

-Abba Eban

"If the devil were to offer me a resurgence of what is commonly called virility, I'd decline. 'Just keep my liver and lungs in good working order, so I can go on drinking and smoking.'"

-Luis Buñuel

"I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back."

-Zsa Zsa Gabor

"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it."

-Knute Rockne

"He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have beautiful roses in his heart."

-Dean Hole

"Someone said God gave us memory that we might have roses in December."

-Sir James M. Barrie

"You are only a rose in the garden of life, but without you, the garden would not be complete."

-Natalie Oleas

"If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it."

-Bill Cosby

"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature."

-Henry James

"To acquire wealth is difficult, to preserve it more difficult, but to spend it wisely is most difficult of all."

-Edward Day

"If you need something done, ask someone busy."

"Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges."

-Arnold Toynbee

"Those who corrupt the public mind are as evil as those who steal from the public purse."

-Adlai Stevenson

"Enlighten the people generally and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

-Thomas Jefferson

"Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet."

"I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert."

"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused."

"A clean house is a sign of a misspent life."

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."

-Andrew Jackson

"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

-Albert Einstein

"My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

-J. B. S. Haldane

"He bids fair to grow wise who has discovered that he is not so."

-Pubilius Syrus

"I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks."

-Totie Fields

"Men never think their fortune too great, nor their wit too little."

-Dr. Thomas Fuller

"Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching."

-Mark Twain

"Failure follows the person whose wishbone is where his backbone should be."

"We all live every day in virtual environments, defined by our ideas."

-Michael Chrichton, Disclosure

"A window of opportunity won't open itself."

-Dave Weinbaum

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive."

-Anaïs Nin

"The ego is the ugly little troll that lives underneath the bridge between your mind and your heart."

-Dennis Miller

"Love is how we feel toward those who show us that which is lovable about ourselves."

-Gerry Spence

"Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment."

-Oprah Winfrey

"What luck for rulers that men do not think."

-Adolph Hitler

"The happier you are to see others, the happier they'll be to see you."

-Abigail Van Buren

"Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."

-John Milton

"It is not the function of Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."

-Robert Houghwout Jackson

"You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war."

-John Foster Dulles

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."

-George Washington

"Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue."

-Roger C. Anderson

"It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it."

-Sean O'Casey

"Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in respnsibility."

-W. E. B. DuBois

"Doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune."

-William McFee

"A competitive world has two possibilities. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change."

-Lester C. Thurow

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."

-Mark Twain

"My knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic."

-Albert Schweitzer

"Praise does wonders for one's sense of hearing."

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."

-Charles Lamb

"Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, the romance and you find out you still care for that person."

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

-Robert Frost

"Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting."

-Elizabeth Bibesco

"A hungry man is not a free man."

-Adlai Stevenson

"The smallest deed always exceeds the grandest of intentions."

"None of us can do anything great on our own, but we can all do a small thing with great love."

-Mother Theresa

"Age is a high price to pay for maturity."

-Tom Stoppard

"If a nation values anything more than its freedom, it will lose its freedom."

-Somerset Maugham

"The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly."

"Winners forget they're in a race. They just love to run."

-"Simon Wilder" (Joe Pesci), With Honors

"The poorest of all is not the man without a cent, but the man without a dream."

"The only preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today."

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"Temper is what gets most of us in trouble. Pride is what keeps us there."

"The heart is the happiest when it beats for others."

"Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

"Although the tongue weighs very little, very few people are able to hold it."

"Success in marriage is more than finding the right person. It's becoming the right person."

"Falling down doesn't make you a failure. Staying down does."

"Let us give nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do."

-Michel de Montaigne

"God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more."

-Henry Ward Beecher

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

-Ambrose Redmoon

"If a thousand steps separate you from God, He will take all but one."

"The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice."

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of te world."

-Arthur Schopenhauer

"If your children look up to you, you've made a success of life's biggest job."

"In charity there is no excess."

-Francis Bacon

"A stumble may prevent a fall."

-English proverb

"It is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right than to temporarily displease them by doing what you know is wrong."

-William J. H. Boetcker

"Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools."

-Gene Brown

"Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen."

-Warren E. Burger

"When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don't pray, they stop."

"People who need people are the luckiest people in the world."

-Barbra Streisand

"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age."

-Robert Frost

"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."

-William Faulkner

"The whole art of government consists in the art of honesty."

-Thomas Jefferson

"Life is too short to be small."

-Benjamin Disraeli

"The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn."

-H. G. Wells

"The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness."

-William Saroyan

"A goal, a love, and a dream give you total control over your body and your life."

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without finding the other end fastened about his own neck."

-Frederick Douglass

"I haven't heard of anyone who wants to stop living on account of the cost."

-F. McKinney Hubbard

"Nothing is so useless as a general maxim."

-Thomas Macaulay

"Growing old is no more than a bad habit that a busy person has no time to form."

-André Maurois

"Much learning does not teach understanding."

-Heraclitus

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience - well, that comes from poor judgment."

"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."

-Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Some people complain that God put thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns."

"There is nothing as beautiful and can make a man feel closer to God than a smile on a woman's face."

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights made an airplane."

"It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere."

"Never knock on Death's door, ring the doorbell and run."

"A closed mouth gathers no feet."

"Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die."

"The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth."

"Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There are two things to do about the gospel: believe it and behave it."

-Susannah Wesley

"A good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help someone up."

"A real friend is one who walks in when everyone else walks out."

"A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee."

-Arnold H. Glasgow

"If I've learned anything in my 70 years it's that nothing is as good or bad as it appears."

-Bushrod H. Campbell

"We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

-Sam Keen

"There's nothing so dangerous for manipulators as people who think for themselves."

-Meg Greenfield

"Virtually every important action in life involves educated guesswork. Too few chances reliable translate into too few victories."

-Thomas W. Hazlett

"Today is always here. Tomorrow, never."

-Toni Morrison

"A penny saved could have been invested in the biggest bull market in history - if only you hadn't listened to your idiot brother-in-law."

-John Kernell

"Never underestimate the impression you may make on others."

"Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn one's back on life."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

"'Conscious' is when you're aware of something, and 'Conscience' is when you wish you weren't."

"Regret and fear are the twin thieves who rob us of today."

-Robert Hastings

"The game of life is not about winning or losing. It's not about whether you can or you can't. It's about loving the game enough to play, and wanting it enough to try."

-Conrad

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

-George Orwell

"Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind."

-Maxwell Bodenheim

"As if they were our own handiwork, we place a high value on our characters."

-Epicurus

"I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches."

-Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"Life is always more fun after midnight."

-Conrad

"Nothing has to remain the way it is if that's not the way a person wants it to be."

-Azie Taylor Morton

"I would rather lose track of a lifetime in good conversation, than squander it alone."

-Conrad

"Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."

-Lily Tomlin

"A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking."

"If at first you DO succeed, try not to look too astonished."

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

"We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail."

-Greil Marcus

"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."

-William Wrigley, Jr.

"Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being."

"The people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon."

"It's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be."

"It's a lot easier to react than to think."

"We are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel."

"Heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences."

"Learning to forgive takes practice."

"True friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance."

"Maturity has more to do with what experiences you've had and what you've learned from them than how many birthdays you've celebrated."

"Families aren't always biological."

"No matter how bad your heart is broken, the worlds doesn't stop for your grief."

"It isn't always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself."

"It takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it."

"It's not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts."

"You can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you'd better know something."

"It's not what happens to people that's important. It's what they do about it."

"No matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides."

"There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who need closure."

-Mark Schmidt

"There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend."

-Katharine Butler Hathaway

"Love that is fed by jealousy dies hard."

-Ovid

"Don't trust a man who doesn't close his eyes when you kiss him."

"The best relationship is one where your love for each other is greater than your need for each other."

"Judge your success by what you had to give up for it."

"Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon."

"Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want."

"When you say, 'I love you,' mean it."

"When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye."

"Be engaged at least six months before you get married."

"Believe in love at first sight."

"Never laugh at anyone's dreams."

"Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely."

"Talk slow but think quick."

"Great love and great achievements always involve great risk."

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values."

"Silence is the best answer."

"Write. It's the shortest route to immortality."

"Never interrupt when you're being flattered."

"I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol."

"Constant change is here to stay."

"Dark is faster than light, otherwise you would see it."

"I will defend to your death your right to my opinion."

"If you ain't makin' waves, you ain't kickin' hard enough!"

"If you call me insane again, I'll eat your other eye."

"Reality is a cheap substitute for Prozac."

"You should hardly ever equivocate."

"I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain."

-Carol Leifer

"Never moon a werewolf."

-Mike Binder

"Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully."

"Just one year of love is better than a lifetime alone."

-Freddie Mercury, Queen

"Writing and rewriting is a constant search for what one is trying to say."

-John Updike

"You don't love because, you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."

-William Faulkner

"Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Every day you're alive is a special occasion."

-quoted by Ann Wells

"You've been nothing but an angel every day of your life, and now you wonder what it's like to be damned."

-Meat Loaf, "Good Girls Go to Heaven"

"If you removed the rocks, the brook would lose its song."

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, because you never know how soon it will be too late."

"I am neither a man nor a woman but an author."

-Charlotte Bronte

"Wealth is what you accumulate by living well below your means."

-Thomas Stanley

"Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff."

-Richard Carlson

"Feeling is the language of the soul."

-Neale Donald Walsh

"No matter how yesterday went, you have the opportunity to improve on it and better yourself today."

-Bob Greene

"My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her 50 years ago, and I still do."

-Maya Angelou

"The journey is the reward."

-Greg Norman

"You are a very special person - become what you are."

-Desmond Tutu

"Service is the rent we pay for living."

-Marian Wright Edelman

"Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God's business."

-Michael J. Fox

"Man becomes that which he gazes upon."

-George Harrison

"Love what you do. Believe in your instincts. And you'd better be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off every day."

-Mario Andretti

"Don't follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail."

-Ruby Bridges

"Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place."

-Rosalyn Carter

"No dream is too high for those with their eyes in the sky."

-Buzz Aldrin

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."

-Marilyn vos Savant

"To be is to do."

-Sartre

"To do is to be."

-Camus

"Do be do be do."

-Sinatra

"By perseverance, even the snail reached the Ark."

-Charles Pungeon

"None knows the weight of another's burden."

-Thomas Fuller

"To measure a man, measure his heart."

-Malcolm S. Forbes

"Boundaries are for golf, not life."

-Tiger Woods

"You don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they're popular; you make them because they're right."

-Theodore Hesburgh

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven!"

-William Wordsworth

"Trying is the first step towards failure."

-"Homer Simpson" (Dan Castallaneta), The Simpsons

"Education means developing the mind, not stuffing the memory."

"Have something to say, say it as clearly as you can. This is the only secret of style."

-Mathew Arnold

"Experience should teach us that it is always the unexpected that does occur."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

"A work of art is a corner of creation seens through a temperament."

-Emile Zola

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

-Henry Adams

"It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well."

-Rene Descartes

"the final antidote: to love and forgive."

-Louise Bogan

"Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other."

-Ann Landers

"God doesn't give people things He doesn't want them to use."

-"Col. Chappy Sinclair" (Louis Gossett, Jr.), Iron Eagle

"The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."

-Henrik Ibsen

"If you can't take it with you, use it before you go."

"You don't legislate what only God and glaciers can do."

-Steve LaTourette

"If you are blessed with a sympathetic disposition, don't waste it on yourself."

-Benjamin Franklin

"We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are."

-Anais Nin

"I loaf and invite my soul."

-Walt Whitman

"A brand-new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence."

-Baltasar Gracian

"Guilt is a gift that keeps on giving."

-Erma Bombeck

"There are two ways to live: one is as if nothing is a miracle; the other is as if everything is."

-Albert Einstein

"The world wants to be deceived."

-Sebastian Brant

"Work eight hours, sleep eight hours - but not the same eight hours."

"Night brings our troubles to light, rather than banishes them."

-Seneca

"Tact is the intelligence of the heart."

"Put more trust in nobility of character than in oath."

-Solon

"If we really lived in a logical world, men rather than women would have ridden side saddle."

-George Bernard Shaw

"War is God's way of teaching us geography."

-Paul Rodriguez

"If you can tell a wise man by the color of his skin, then mister, you're a better man than I."

-Stephen Tyler, Aerosmith

"Black holes are where God divided by zero."

"No man is an island, but if you tie enough of them together they make a fine raft."

"Nothing worth learning can ever be taught."

-Oscar Wilde

"Rumors are always true."

"How a man plays the game shows something of his character; how he loses shows all of it."

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

"It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

"It is better to sleep on what you plan to do than to be kept awake by what you've done."

"A grain of poetry suffices to season a century."

-Jose Marti

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

-William James

"Suspicion is the companion of mean souls and the bane of all good society."

-Thomas Paine

"'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

-William Shakespeare

"It's difficult to work in a group when you are omnipotent."

-"Q" (John de Lancie), Star Trek: The Next Generation

"No man is indispensable."

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well."

-H.T. Leslie

"Few women admit their age. Fewer men act it."

"Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life."

-Joseph Campbell

"The illusion that times that were are better than times that are has probably pervaded all ages."

-Horace Greeley

"Never ruin an apology with an excuse."

-Kimberly Johnson

"Let mourning stop when one's grief is fully expressed."

-Confucius

"We have become the kind of society that civilized countries used to send missionaries to."

-William Bennett

"Just as every cloud has a silver lining, every bright cheerful day has some dark undertone."

-Nathan Williams

"I am an optimist. It doesn't seem too much use being anything else."

-Sir Winston Churchill

"True friendship is never serene."

-Marie de Serigne

"If you haven't got it, fake it."

-Christian Slater

"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."

-Abraham Lincoln

"Peace is not made with friends. Peace is made with enemies."

-Yitzhak Rabin

"In all that surrounds him the egotist sees only the frame of his own portrait."

-J. Petit-Senn

"Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses."

-Georges Bernanos

"The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe."

-David Hare

"One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind."

-Malayan proverb

"There is no substitute for hard work."

-Thomas Edison

"There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law."

-Abraham Lincoln

"I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved."

-George Eliot

"People only see what they are prepared to see."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Never argue with a fool. He may be doing the same thing."

"A lie is not a lie if you truly believe it."

-"George Costanza" (Jason Alexander), Seinfeld

"Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the lifeblood of real civilization."

-George Macaulay Trevelyan

"Life is one long improvisation."

"Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition."

"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

"Life's to short to dance with ugly women."

"Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off."

"Eschew obfuscation."

"It's lonely at the top, but you eat better."

"Never play leapfrog with a unicorn."

"Smile. It's the second best thing you can do with your lips."

"When you're in love, you're at the mercy of a stranger."

"Just when you think you've won the rat race, along come faster rats."

"If it's too loud, you're too old."

"Cynics are people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"Flying saucers are real; the Air Force doesn't exist."

"Fight crime: shoot back."

-Remy Barnes

"Gun control means using both hands!"

-Barry Bean

"Worry, God knows all about you."

-Frank Warmerdam

"Humpty Dumpty was pushed."

-Susan Lee Rivas

"I'd rather be over the hill than under it."

-David Brown

"Nonconformists are all alike."

-Duncan Frenz

"I didn't work my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables."

"Don't piss me off. I'm running out of places to hide the bodies."

-Stephanie Martin

"The gene pool could use a little chlorine."

-Letitia Yao

"End racism...kill everyone."

-Laura Giannotti

"If we weren't meant to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"

-Cory Gallagher

"Work is for people who don't know how to fish."

-Mark Roach

"Conserve water; shower with a friend."

"So many stupid people, so few comets."

-Letitia Yao

"Guns don't kill people, they just make it easier."

-Skylar Sutton

"Madness takes its toll - please have exact change ready."

-Robert Hallworth

"Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control."

-Judd & Sara Stewart

"Never fight ugly people; they have nothing to lose."

"All generalizations are false."

-Jill Wood-Naatz

"Vegetarian: Indian word for lousy hunter."

-Brian Aronson

"Of course you're faster, but I'm driving in front of you."

-Alfred Stoffels

"Bright red meat is good for you. Fuzzy green meat is not good for you."

-Victor Burhans

"Save a whale: Harpoon a fat dude."

"A life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives."

-Jackie Robinson

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

-Hanlon's Razor

"There's nothing like mixing with woman to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense."

-Thornton Wilder

"Success is the best revenge."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

-Albert Einstein

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-Charles H. Duell, U.S. Patent Office, 1889

"Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge."

-William Shakespeare

"Confidence is very sexy."

-Jack Palance

"A little lie is like a little pregnancy. It's not long before everyone knows."

-C.S. Lewis

"Coasting to the bottom is the only disgrace."

-John Popper, Blues Traveler

"What good is wealth sitting in the bank?"

-Ted Turner

"He who wants to know people should study their excuses."

-Friedrich Hebbel

"It's not what they say about you, it's what they whisper."

-Errol Flynn

"The flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present."

-Epicurus

"Only when it is dark enough can we see the stars."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"All glory comes from daring to dream."

-Ancient proverb

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."

-Ingrid Bergman

"No trumpets sound when the important decisions are made. Destiny is made known silently."

-Agnes de Mille

"Be happy. It is a way of being wise."

-Colette

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."

-Henry Ford

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

-Gandhi

"In the small matters trust your mind. In the large ones trust your heart."

-Sigmund Freud

"God is a magician, reality is his trick, and it's all done with mirrors."

"Genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum."

-Charles Spencer

"We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance."

-Harrison Ford

"Diplomacy is the art of knowing what not to say."

-Matthew Trump

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."

-Judy Garland

"In music's sweet harmony, I have all the proof I need of God."

-Pat Conroy

"Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either."

-Golda Meir

"Man is the only animal that goes to sleep when he isn't sleepy and gets up when he is."

-Dave Gneiser

"A good answer is what you think of later."

-Sam Ewing

"Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive."

-Elbert Hubbard

"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."

"Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery."

-Henry James

"Do not fear to be eccentric of opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."

-Bertrand Russell

"In the fields of operation, chance favors the prepared mind."

-Louis Pasteur

"Conquer yourself rather than the world."

-Rene Descartes

"The least known things are always the most wondrous."

-Tacitus

"Life's a gamble...then you die."

-"Brian Hackett" (Stephen Weber), Wings

"The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost."

"If you love, love without reservation. If you fight, fight without fear."

-"Susan Ivonova" (Claudia Christian), Babylon 5

"It takes a lot of things to prove you are smart, but only one thing to prove you are ignorant."

-Don Herold

"A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself."

-William Hazlitt

"Intelligence is like a river: The deeper it is, the less noise it makes."

-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Adolescence is like a house on moving day - a temporary mess."

-Julius Warren

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

-Elvis Costello

"God always answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no."

-Kirk Douglas

"No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it."

-Garrison Keillor

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."

-Lorraine Hansberry

"Men who treat women as helpless and charming playthings deserve women who treat men as delightful and generous bank accounts."

-GQ

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."

-Harry S Truman

"The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has changed to advertising copy."

-Mortimer B. Zuckerman

"Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens."

-Cathy Guisewite

"Holding on to anger only gives you tense muscles."

-Joan Lunden

"The phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm."

-Ogden Nash

"Integrity has no need of rules."

-Albert Camus

"Longer than deeds liveth the word."

-Pindar

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."

-William Blake

"There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."

-Ralph Nader

"Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not move others."

-Mencius

"Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them."

-Adlai Stevenson

"Love and time - those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent."

-Gary Jennings

"'Well-adjusted' means you can make the same mistakes over and over again, and keep smiling."

-George Bergman

"One who can always think of something to do in his/her spare time, has no spare time."

-Jennifer Myers

"Love is only chatter, friends are all that matter."

-Gelett Burgess

"One may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

-Shakespeare

"Now and then it's good to ause in the our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

"We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it."

-John Steinbeck

"That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A child becomes an adult when he realizes he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong."

-Thomas Szasz

"Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out."

-Karl Menninger

"Success covers a multitude of blunders."

-George Bernard Shaw

"The opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy."

-Leo Buscaglia

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

-Mark Twain

"Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings."

-C. D. Jackson

"Sometimes I would almost rather have people take away years of my life than take away a moment."

-Pearl Bailey

"To life only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."

-Robert Pirsig

"Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open."

-John Barrymore

"A laugh at your own expense costs you nothing."

-Mary Waldrip

"The best cure for insomnia is a Monday morning."

-Sandy Cooley

"If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

-Dolly Parton

"Bore: Somebody who, when you ask him how he is, tells you."

"We protest against unjust criticism, but we accept unearned applause."

-José Narosky

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

-Harper Lee

"Your liberty to swing your arms ends where my nose begins."

-Stuart Chase

"It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding."

-Kahlil Gibran

"The good part about telling the truth is you don't have to remember what you said."

-Dustin Spainhower

"The cinema has no boundary, it is a ribbon of dream."

-Orson Welles

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."

-Mary Tyler Moore

"Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything."

-Floyd Dell

"One kind word can warm THREE winter months."

-Japanese proverb

"A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections."

-George Eliot

"Kindness and consideration are never wasted and are almost always rewarded."

-Betty Boop

"Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death of a sparrow in the corner of a barn."

-T. Savage

"Stupidity won't kill you, but it can make you sweat."

-English proverb

"It helps to think of rock music as youth's way of getting even for spinach."

-Robert Orben

"The future is only the past again, entered through another gate."

-Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent."

-William Blake

"Your expression is the most important thing you can wear."

-Sid Ascher

"Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once."

-graffiti at NWMSC

"Too much agreement kills a chat."

-Eldridge Cleaver

"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."

-John Tudor

"Good sense is easier to have than use."

-James Grady

"True friends are like diamonds / precious but rare / False friends are like autumn leaves / found everywhere"

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

-Thomas Edison

"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."

-Emerson Pugh

"May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions."

-Joey Adams

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

-Mother Theresa

"Experience is a wonderful thing; it enables you to recognize a mistake every time you repeat it."

-AP

"Art is the ony way to run away without leaving home."

-Twyla Thorp

"Sometimes the best helping hand you can get is a good firm push."

-JoAnn Thomas

"The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced."

-Vic Gold

"Classic: A book which people praise and don't read."

-Mark Twain

"One does not make friends. One recognizes them."

-Garth Heinrichs

"One thought driven home is better than three left on base."

-James Liter

"You can get through life with bad manners, but it's easier with good manners."

-Lillian Gish

"No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy."

-Bern Williams

"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."

-E. Foley

"Life is like a 10-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use."

-Charles Schulz

"Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us."

-Eric Hoffer

"Collaboration: The process whereby two people create something each thinks is his own."

"Oh, the summer night has a smile of light, and she sits on a sapphire throne."

-B. W. Procter

"Liberty is always dangerous but it's the safest thing we have."

-Harry Fosdick

"Don't expect anything original from an echo."

"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting."

-Tom Stoddard

"There are few things more consoling to men than the mere finding that other men have felt as they feel."

-Frederick Faber

"When a man says money can do anything, that settles it; he hasn't any."

-Ed Howe

"Laughter can be heard farther than weeping."

-Yiddish proverb

"The day is a shoe to be walked in."

-Steve Orlen

"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."

-Daniel Boorstin

"When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others."

-Anne Lindbergh

"On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time."

-George Orwell

"Every question possesses a power that does not lie in the answer."

-Elie Wiesel

"I am a part of all that I have read."

-John Kiernan

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

-Muriel Rukeyser

"Reading is autobiographical. A reader brings a vocabulary, a background, biases, to everything he reads. A written piece can never be reread; everyone reads as a new self, on a new day, at a new place in life."

"The true art of BS lies in saying more than your audience knows."

-Conrad

"Love is having someone pat your shoulder at the end of a long day."

-Fawnn

"Ambition is a virtue...Patience slows one down."

-Fawnn

"Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say goodbye 'til it be morrow."

-Shakespeare

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one."

-Henry David Thoreau

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

-Emily Dickinson

"A poet looks at the world like a man looks at a woman."

-Wallace Stevens

"Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited."

-James Cardinal Gibbons

"Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed."

-Karl Marx

"Misery doesn't actually love company; it just hates to see anyone else happy."

-Jay Gilday

*** Signoff: NudeDude (never try to pluck a live chicken)

*** Signoff: wyzaz (true love comes in many shapes and forms, but then again so does influenza)

*** Signoff: BigBunny (True beauty must be bled. The desire to create is the cutting blade, and my pen will struggle to catch the drops of glory.

"Saying Windows 95 is equal to Macintosh is like finding a potato that looks like Jesus and believing you've seen the Second Coming."

-Guy Kawasaki

"Education is what you get when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get when you don't."

-Pete Seeger

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off."

-Johnny Carson

"If you don't know where you want to go, we'll make sure you get taken."

-Microsoft ad slogan, translated into Japanese

"If you would seek the meaning of our lives, the reason for our existence, it is this: to have sex and eat ice cream until they come to throw you into the peat bog."

-Soren Kierkegaard

"Meaning transfigures all."

-Sir Laurens van der Post

"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

-Robert Heinlein

"Life would be easier if I had the source code."

-Nick Walters

"Hope you won't mind if I control my fate."

-John Popper, "Blues Traveler"

"Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid."

-Albert Schweitzer, MD

"Superstition and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging."

-Martin Luther

"It is more tolerable to be refused than deceived."

-Pubilius Syrus

"You can't fall off the floor."

-Stephen Wright

"Diplomacy is the fine art of letting someone else have it your way."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no effect on society."

-Stephen Wright

"The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was."

-Stephen Wright

"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."

-Stephen Wright

"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm."

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

"If at first you don't succeed, redefine success."

"If you can't enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else."

"If you can't win by reason, go for volume."

"Let go of what you are and you might become what you could be."

"Public opinion is what you think other people are thinking."

"Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of."

"The computer revolution is over. They won."

"Robin Hood was a terrorist."

"The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes."

"When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane."

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited."

-Plutarch

"Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses."

-George Washington Carver

"We're raising a whole generation of kids who don't know what counterclockwise means."

-Randy Hughes, on technology

"Get the facts first, and then you can distort them as you like."

-Mark Twain

"True love is like seeing ghosts: we all talk about it, but few of us have ever seen one."

-Francois Duc La Rochefoucauld

"The poetry of earth is never dead."

-John Keats

"He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the nearest exit."

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

-Maureen Dowd

"You can't stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh."

-Jay Leno

"Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's levels of aspiration and expectation."

-Jack Nicklaus, My Story (Simon & Schuster)

"We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are."

-Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh's Army (Knopf)

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

-Thomas Jefferson

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."

-Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

"If I treat you as you are, I will make you worse. If I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become it."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"'How does one grow up?' I asked a friend. She answered, 'By thinking.'"

-May Sarton

"We pay a high price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure - all your life. It's as simple as that."

-John Gardner

"I try to take life one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me all at once."

-Ashleigh Brilliant

"To learn as an equal - as someone whose own experience is also knowledge - is not only to be educated, but to be empowered."

-Barbara Ehrenrich

"There is a mystery about stringing words together which cannot well be solved until one has strung a lot of words together."

-MacKinlay Kanton

"Life's tough...It's even tougher when you're stupid."

-"Paul Robinette" (Richard Brooks), Law and Order

"We will either find a way, or we will make one."

-Hannibal

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'"

-George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah" Act I, Part I

"Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full."

-Henry Kissinger

"If you're doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth crap, not with the good Lord telling him how to screw you on the deal."

-William S. Burroughs, Words of Advice for Young People

"The problem with the world today is that the people with great ideas and concepts write books about them, rather than putting them into practice."

-Conrad

"Do not play with your food, unless you have already eaten your toys."

-"Garfield" (Jim Davis)

"we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tell ourselves it has meanng, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end."

-"Lestat de Lioncourt"
Tale of the Body Thief (Anne Rice)

"Necessity is not the mother of invention; imagination is."

-Leonard Green

"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in the garage makes you a car."

-Garrison Keillor, quoted by John Welch

"Those who cannot laugh at themselves leave the job to others."

-Milton Berle, quoted by Matthew Lawrence

"it is better to beg for forgiveness, than to ask for permission."

-Quoted by Chad Nicholas

"Castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventually."

-Jimi Hendrix

"Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past?"

-Jimi Hendrix

"The first rule when playing with the devil is don't."

-Quoted by Dave Sag

"direct marketers ... are all arseholes. Marketing people suck, P.R. people ... are worse than Satan and you can't trust any of 'em."

-Dave Sag, on spammers

"When you look back on your life, you will regret more what you didn't do than what you did."